RICHMOND, Va. — Thousands of athletes excel in their chosen sports every year and CBS 6 does its best to profile them in Central Virginia.
But that's on the local level. If you can rise to an international level on a global stage, people will remember you forever.
One of the greatest careers in international women's soccer almost didn't happen at all.
Briana Scurry had her heart set on a different sport at the ripe old age of nine.
"Tackle football, with helmets, pads, the whole nine yards. So I played in fourth and fifth grade. Absolutely loved it," Briana Scurry said.
Her mother allowed the choice until she got too good to play with smaller kids.
So she needed to find a new avenue, soccer.
Still playing with all boys in rural Minnesota indirectly led to her eventual position on the field.
"I was the only girl on an all-boys team my first year. My coach was one of the fathers of one of the boys, and he didn't know a whole lot about the game, so he thought goalkeeping was a safe place for the only girl on the team," Scurry said.
Briana also played forward and, for a time, played both positions when a girls’ team was started at her high school.
But she soon realized she could control the outcome of any game more by being in net.
"I could score one goal or two goals, but they would score two or three goals. We won a lot, but we also lost a lot," Scurry said. "I then decided that I could control how the game went easier from the goal."
She became an All-American goalkeeper in high school and the National Goalkeeper of the Year in 1993 at the University of Massachusetts, which eventually led to a spot on the U.S. National Team.
Briana was a member of the gold medal-winning side at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Even with that success, she and her teammates still didn't fully grasp their popularity by the time they made it to the World Cup Final in 1999.
"We were driving into the stadium, and we were a little bit late because we were being escorted. There was a lot of traffic, and we were thinking, 'Why is there so much traffic? Who's got a game at the same time we have a game? Don't they know we have our game?'" Scurry said. "Then as we were driving in, we noticed it was little girls with pigtails, wearing red, white, and blue, with 'Go USA' scribbled on the windows of their cars. The traffic was for us — not for something else — and we weren't used to that."
They became not only cultural icons but also inspirations for people across all walks of life.
There is a reverence and sense of pride Briana gets from people who still want to share their memories of her team's success.
"I still hear it, and it never gets old," Scurry said. "People come up to me all the time — whether I'm in the airport or just at the gym, or when I go to different events — usually it's older people, people that saw our championship win or were there."
Scurry's career came to an abrupt end in 2010 when a collision in goal left her with a concussion from which she would not return.
The sudden change of lifestyle was difficult to navigate and made worse by insurance issues from a league that folded soon after she was hurt.
"I literally went from being a happy person — exceptionally, you know, doing this, doing that — to just a ghost of myself over the course of two and a half to three years. I really struggled with it, and it was horrible," Scurry said.
Briana recovered and became an advocate for those suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
She has testified before Congress and became an inspiration in a new way for athletes suffering from similar issues.
She wrote a book titled My Greatest Save, which has meaning both on and off the field.
"Well, My Greatest Save is obviously a double meaning as a goalkeeper — that one is obvious — but I think the 'save' part is that I was myself saved by people who really cared about me, and essentially by love," Scurry said.
We are honored to have Briana join us as our guest host for the 5th Annual RVA Sports Awards later this month, celebrating the best performances from Central Virginia in 2025. You can see them right here on CBS 6 on Saturday, January 31, at 7:30 p.m.
If you would like to nominate someone for us to profile, email us at beyondtheroster@wtvr.com.
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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