Football

Tierna Davidson on Emma Hayes, karaoke and USWNT's gold medal win at Paris Olympics: 'Potential is limitless'

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Aug 20, 2024 / 9102 Views

Evan Walker

NEW YORK -- U.S. women's national team defender Tierna Davidson believes the squad's "potential is limitless" after overcoming an unconventional year to win Olympic gold in Paris earlier this month, the group's first major international title since winning the 2019 Women's World Cup.

The USWNT beat Brazil 1-0 to win their fifth Olympic gold medal, marking the successful end of a redemption tour that started a year earlier with their earliest ever exit at the World Cup. The team then underwent a major squad overhaul, resulting in 10 players who were not at last year's World Cup cracking the 22 person roster for the Olympics, Davidson included. The biggest change, though, was welcoming new head coach Emma Hayes in late May after she wrapped up her 12 year stay at Chelsea, giving her just four games to work with the USWNT before the Olympics began.

The rapid changes caused some uncertainty amongst the group, but Davidson lauded both Hayes' strategy and the squad's resilience for creating the foundation for their gold medal triumph.

"We all knew that she is a great coach," Davidson said on Thursday at a Raising Cane's in Manhattan, where she was partaking in sponsorship activities days after the gold medal Game. "We had seen what she'd done with Chelsea and that she was going to be really great for our group. I think it's exactly what we needed during this time but as always, we weren't exactly sure of just the basic things, like how she wanted to run a training session or maybe how she coached on the sideline, so those are the things we had to build into and learn, especially in our pre-camp coming into the Olympics.

"It was something that we all recognized and acknowledged, herself included, and I think that was so helpful to get the elephant out of the room and say, 'This is weird.' It's not normal that you have a brand-new coach coming in right before a major tournament but we're going to commit to each other, we're going to commit to the process and I think it worked out really well for us."

Davidson said Hayes took a layered but transparent approach with her players about the task at hand, as well as who she is as a person and a coach.

"I think that she does a really great job in humanizing herself and recognizing the difficulties of her job, our job, of what we have to do and the pressure that comes with it and just getting out in the open," Davidson said. "I think it allows everybody to just take a deep breath and really realize that the game is just a game. Each game that we play is a 90 minute game, in some cases 120, but mostly 90 minute games where we have the same objective that we always do and I think that really released us and allowed us to play with joy and with each other as teammates, but also as friends and really build that chemistry."

Hayes' strategy to build chemistry included team bonding exercises like karaoke, which Davidson said she does not "really do," as well as selecting "Strut" by the Cheetah Girls, the Disney-formed girl group of the aughts.

"I'm not one of the avid Cheetah Girls fans on the team, but we do have a few and this song kind of came on," Davidson recalled. "We were trying to decide what our new walkout song would be, or the last song we play before we leave the locker room for warmups and a few different options were thrown out and that is the one that stuck and it certainly raised the locker room to new levels and so I think it's a bit of a special anthem for the team now."

Turning the page on the USWNT's World Cup exit a year earlier was no small feat, especially considering that the demands to win were still there even in the increasingly women's soccer landscape fueled by increased funds and attention. Despite the instant success of the new look USWNT, Davidson said a team-wide practice of patience allowed them to win their first gold medal in 12 years.

"It was really us committing to the process and committing to each other and understanding that it wasn't going to be perfect, there were going to be bumps in the round and not expecting perfection from ourselves and putting ourselves under that kind of unrealistic pressure," she said.

The leniency to play imperfectly worked hand-in-hand with the USWNT's squad refresh, which saw younger players either join the team for the first time or carve out starting spots. That group includes the new front line of Mallory Swanson, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman, who scored a combined 10 goals despite only earning a handful of starts together before the Olympics. Davidson, who broke into the USWNT as a teenager and won the World Cup at age 20 in 2019, noted that the team's embrace of younger players was just as beneficial for the individuals as it was for the group as a whole.

"I think something that was so exciting to see was all of these young players grow into themselves in this tournament and really express themselves on the field," the 25-year-old Davidson said. "I think that is something really special, to see the personalities, to see the styles of play, to see the chemistry building. … When I was first on this team, I was just so focused on playing and just being there and really being a little bit myopic about it that you don't really see those growth patterns, and perhaps I was the one doing that growth pattern, but to turn and now see some of the younger players do that, to have such a fantastic tournament experience was really something special and I think it bodes really well for the future of the team."

The gold medal win now serves as a strong foundation for a new look group, especially now without the time crunch of an impending international tournament.

"I think the potential is limitless," she said. "I really think it was great that this group got a taste of what it was like to win at the international level, on a big stage and I think everybody wants to be back there again."