A Hall of Fame induction isn’t something anyone takes lightly, though while speaking to reporters about the fact that she’ll be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame next month, Tobin Heath admitted that up until this, “there’s probably nothing in my career that I’ve ever been like, ‘Oh my gosh, what an honor.’”
“I know that’s weird, because when you play for the U.S. National Team, you’re part of the pipeline.” she continued. “I was always going to programs and to teams that won.” In other words, winning was the default: the expectation.
But that doesn’t mean winning was always easy, which is what makes the Hall of Fame induction so special. “It’s kind of the totality of your work in all the various places, and you can’t really connect the stars or the dots while you’re doing it,” Heath explained. “Only when you look back. … I think when I heard of the Hall of Fame, it wasn’t even a thought. It’s not really something that I even knew really existed, to be honest.”
As a child just beginning to learn the game, her goals didn’t include becoming a member of the Hall of Fame. “That seems like it’s reserved for American football… I was really emotional when I found out about it.”
Heather O’Reilly found out she was nominated for the Hall of Fame after showing up at the University of North Carolina, presumably to participate in a video celebration of Heath’s career. “I was thrilled to celebrate her and celebrate her career and and talk about Tobin.” she said. “I have a lot of love and respect for Tobin, always somebody that sort of did things her own way.”
She eventually found out the so-called interview with Anson Dorrance was fake, and was merely an opportunity to lead her to the locker room, where she was greeted by her husband, agent, and friends who told her the big news. “So it was a very special day… perfect. All the people that really should have been there were there. And it was definitely one that I’ll remember,” O’Reilly added.
A friendship forged through connection
To say the pair have been impactful for USWNT is an understatement; both Heath and O’Reilly are among a group of athletes who have won four major titles under the American banner. That’s a feat that has yet to be replicated, and changes in the nature of how the national team now functions could mean it never will be.
In some ways, it’s easier than it used to be to make it to the Olympics or the World Cup, Heath told reporters, simply because team rosters are so much larger. “I think about that a lot,” she said. “I think about opportunity a lot. I just read somewhere that you get eight substitutions in these friendlies — which is insane. I played at a time when there were three substitutions, period, until after COVID.”
Though it’s up for debate as to whether things are “tactically harder or easier now,” she added, “as a player, there was a lot less opportunity for you.”
Team USA should “still win at the rate that has always been the expectation” with or without the increase in substitutions, she said. “I think it’s a failure if we don’t.”
Sharing the honor of being inducted into the Hall of Fame is special to both women. Their relationship dates back to when they played together as high school students, though their age difference meant they “rarely” came in contact, O’Reilly told reporters.
That changed when they both attended and played for the University of North Carolina during O’Reilly’s senior year and Heath’s first. The duo helped their team win the national championship, and reconnected as members of the U.S. Women’s National Team.
Though they’ve found themselves competing for minutes at times, their differences are what made them both strong members of the roster. “I’m a little bit more of a brute athlete, and if something worked, I did it and I did it again, and I did it again, and I did it again, and it worked mostly,” O’Reilly explained. “Whereas Tobin was like an artist, and she was not happy with something that worked over and over again, because she got bored and just wanted to do something else.”
The pair learned from one another, something that only made the team stronger.
“We call each other yin and yang, because together we are, yeah, a lot of love, but we come at life and we come at football [with] a little bit of a different viewpoint,” O’Reilly said.
The opportunity to be inducted alongside O’Reilly is also exceedingly special to Heath, in part due to the legacy they built together. “That is somebody that I adore, [that] is my older sister,” she said. “I literally followed in her footsteps.”
Though the two are opposites in style of play and even as people in general, Heath added, “as competitors and as people that sacrificed everything to get to where we got … man, I’m going to weep for sure. We’ve already cried.”
The induction is “exactly how it’s supposed to be,” she insisted. “I can’t say enough about how much I love that person, and I can’t speak more highly about what she gave to the program.”
Soccer then, soccer now
Like that of a lot of professional women’s sports, the landscape of professional soccer in the United States looks a little different now. It’s never been easier to follow a favorite team or catch a match on TV, and increased exposure and viewership has made a huge impact on the game, as well as the opportunities that are available for its players.
That increased exposure has impacted a crucial parts of the game: innovation and creativity. Heath, who told reporters there were “mad creative players before me” chalked her own ability to play the game in her own style in part due to the fact that when she was doing it, “there was no exposure to women’s football or anything. And I know for a fact that there were some badass women’s footballers, creatively, just tearing it up.”
Her forebears didn’t have “the same types of opportunities and privileges that I had to be able to be recognized and to be able to inspire, right? So, my way that I like to play, and the way that I like to see the game … wasn’t accessible to me, and I couldn’t see it.”
Though she hesitated to describe herself as the first to do anything, “because I know that there was a ton before me,” Heath reflected on the “awesome opportunity in the age that I grew up in, having these new platforms and being more accessible to this next generation.”
The kids are gonna be alright
In a lot of ways, women’s soccer has never existed in a more hospitable environment, and that’s largely thanks to athletes who carved their own path in the game. “I know it’s really cliche to say ‘leaving the game better than you found it,’ but the US and such teams are in really good hands,” Heath said. “And I’m really proud of the continued legacy of all the players that have inspired this next generation, and the kinds of parts that we played, collectively, to ensure that this generation had a lot to look up to.”
That’s on and off the field, she added. As a result, the current crop of American soccer stars feels “that sense of responsibility that we felt … which was to honor the legacy of the U.S. National Team, and continue to sacrifice and make that team successful.”
O’Reilly also made it clear that the future of the U.S. National Team is bright. “I think there’s a lot of young talent right now that are very, very good players,” she said. “Clearly, we all know that the women’s national team has shifted in a major way in terms of how much programming there is through the year, and I think it’s a good thing in terms of people are with their club teams and go into the national team for games, mostly in the FIFA windows.”
In the past, the national team could spend as much as 200 days a year together, she added. “And in one calendar year, I think I played 40 games.” That rate is “kind of unheard of in today’s day,” O’Reilly said. “So when I was playing, it was more that it was almost like my club team was the U.S. Women’s National Team, and you were either in, or you were out.”
USWNT players in 2026 aren’t only limited to the platform of the national team to “prove that you could be the best player in the world,” Heath added. “You have these incredible club platforms now, where all of a sudden you’re starting to see a unique perspective of the game.”
Some of those clubs offer glimpses into what it’s like to play overseas, something that didn’t dominate the sport when Heath played. “There was kind of one way of playing football, and one idea of football. … Our domestic leagues, both men and women: both teams attack each other. That’s American soccer,” she said.
“Our idea of football, and our idea of footballers, is becoming more diverse. Player profiles are becoming diverse; we’re able to kind of fit puzzle pieces together in different ways. I think, overall, what I’m loving about this current generation … is we don’t have the same type of symmetry, right? It’s more creative,” Heath explained.
She continued, “We’re talking about the diversity of player — the whole identity — and you don’t now have to necessarily fit into this mold. You can actually bring your own mold to it, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and you can go back to club and still have an incredible career.”
Tobin and O’Reilly will be inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame on Friday, May 1.
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