Becky
Sauerbrunn

In an attempt to raise her kids to be well-rounded, Becky Sauerbrunn’s mother required each of her three kids to play an instrument, and Becky played the flute.

Once a regular on U.S. Youth National Teams, Sauerbrunn notified her band director that an upcoming trip with the YNT would require her to miss a performance. She was no flute genius—she was not first or second or even third chair. She played the low notes no one really hears, and she didn’t think he would be at all upset by her absence. “But he was irate, furious,” says Sauerbrunn. “And he said to me, ‘You’re not a team player.’”

To Becky, there’s probably no worse insult in the world. I was like, “What the…not a team player? How can you say that? I have no future in band, I am not good—but soccer I could have a future in! I am a team player…I just have to choose which team! The team I can actually help.” Steve Swanson, who coached her on Youth National Teams and at the University of Virginia, loves the flute story, relishes it—because, of course, Becky is the quintessential team player, the ego-free backbone who will do anything for her team.

Becky Sauerbrunn describes herself as her two older brothers’ guinea pig. They’d duct-tape plywood to her arms and take slap shocks at her; they’d see how far they could launch her off the couch; they’d roll her into a blanket like a burrito—so tight that to this day, she does not like being tucked in. They’d steal her stuffed animals and beat them up while she tried to rescue them. Once, they accidentally hit her in the face with the bat—she was gushing blood but her brothers didn’t want to get in trouble, so they slapped a Band-Aid on her and tried to barricade her upstairs. She escaped and her parents took her to the hospital where she got stitches.

“Aside from physically toughening me up, they also toughened me up mentally,” says Sauerbrunn. If she cried, they’d call her a baby. Or if she said ‘Ow’ a little too loud, hoping that her mom and dad would hear, they’d hit her harder, onto her tactics and unimpressed. “I learned how to take it. It taught me how to not really rely on other people to solve my problems. I think that kind of stayed with me. I’m very motivated internally. I’m a bit of a scrapper.”