Togetherness: Carla Overbeck and Nikki McCray
According to a pop song that changed feminism in music during the Nineties, ‘if you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends’.
Women know it well: getting together is always the most powerful weapon. And FILA athletes, if possible, know it even better: among the greatest lessons we can learn from sport, we have the strength and the importance of team playing.
Born in Pasadena, Texas, at the end of the Sixties, Carla Overbeck has been long-time captain of the United States Women’s National Team: she plays her first match in 1988 and wins her first World Cup in 1991. Talented defender, Carla shines in 1995 World Cup and in 1996 at the Olympics; she also plays every single minute of the 1999 World Cup.
In his essay The Captain Class, Sam Walker highlights that the girl runs a lot of matches but scores very few goals: her affection to the team is so strong that everytime she gets the ball, in fact, she passes it to a teammate.
After her retirement, she is introduced in the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She has never given too many interviews: genuinely shy, after every victory she goes back to her faily, while her mates party and celebrate.
Nikki McRay is a gifted defender too, but not of soccer playgrounds: between 1991 and 1995 she’s in the American Basketball League, and in 1998 she signs a one million dollars contract with WNBA, playing nine seasons. Her suits are always red, just like the details of Nikki Delta, the FILA shoes she chose to sign making sure they could be sold for both women and men to wear.
Her personality is strong and competitive, and in the past twenty years she’s been a true model for all the girls longing to play basketball.
She retires in 2006 and immediately reinvents herself as a coach. In November 2013 she’s diagnosed with breast cancer, and she deals with the theraphy by leaning on all her strength. On a Sunday, right before a match involving Gamecocks, the team she trains, she enters the locker room to wish some luck. Surprisingly, the girls wear ‘Play For Nikki’ t-shirts: for the first time, the lioness breaks up in tears. But they’re tears of joy: an athlete is never left alone.
