Photo Copyright Kirby Lee for USA TODAY Sports
When Lauren Cheney was three years old, she underwent open heart surgery to correct a heart defect. Few could have realized that it was just a minor blip on the road to an athletic career that took Cheney — now Lauren Holiday — to the pinnacle of the soccer world in the 2010s.
As the National Soccer Hall of Fame prepares to honor Holiday this weekend as a Class of 2023 inductee, here is a look at her timeline, starting with that fateful phone call from Abby Wambach.
2008 – Olympic gold
Lauren Cheney, as she was known officially back then, was about to enter her junior season at UCLA when she was named an alternate on the U.S. team that was heading to Beijing to contest the Olympics. At the time, alternates did not travel to the Games and in fact, Cheney and fellow alternates Ali Krieger, Kacey White, and Briana Scurry were not even with the team for its final matches before departing for China. During the last of those matches, against Brazil in San Diego, Abby Wambach…
