More than an athlete: Alex Morgan finally gets to be a full-time human after her last professional game

However imminent it may have felt, Alex Morgan’s announcement of her retirement sent seismic waves through the soccer world, the sports world, and beyond. But from the shockwaves created in the wake of her news, a certain poetry emerged.

Morgan - the fifth all-time goal scorer for the U.S. women’s national team with two World Cup championships and two Olympic medals to her name, plus a slew of individual honors - is pregnant with her second child, as she shared in the four-minute retirement video she posted Thursday.

Another moment of poetry took place Friday, when the last question for Morgan during her press conference with the Wave was granted to Naomi Girma, her teammate for club and country.

Girma, the 24-year-old defender who has already begun to receive USWNT captaincy nods, asked Morgan about her favorite memories playing the beautiful game.

Morgan highlighted the moment when she realized that while on the national team, four players - including her - had children, illuminating the progress made in supporting athletes who are parents.

Apart from winning, it was the most understandable and expected response. But then she paused, considered, and gave another answer that felt more private.

She described the airtight focus required of an elite athlete, the robotic auto-drive that erases everything that won’t directly contribute to your success - and how, when you win, “you get to celebrate with your friends and family, and you get to be human again.”

That, she said, has given her some of the best memories of her career.

“We’re all humans and we have emotions and vulnerabilities, and in sport a lot of times you’re shut off from that. You’re so disconnected from your emotions,” Morgan said. “Like, sometimes you don’t smile, for weeks at a time.”

When an athlete chooses to blaze trails rather than follow a paved one, they often sacrifice the ability to be fully human, or accept the risk of what else they might lose if they insist upon that humanity.

There was so much work to be done to improve the women’s game when Morgan began her ascent as a soccer star, and she dedicated herself as much to fighting for the completion of that work as she did to her on-field contributions.

While putting away 123 goals and 53 assists with the USWNT, Morgan was using her name to advocate for equal pay, LGBTQ+ rights, protections against player abuse, and improved support for athletes who’ve given birth and return to work.

For years now, her schedule has been weighed down by media obligations, from interviews to commercials, book deals, and awards shows. And, because the stakes for what Morgan and her teammates wanted to achieve were as high as the margins for error were thin, she was always expected to be "on."

To enter an almost-robotic mode was the only direction she could look. Nearly all of the time, she executed - but occasionally, through the fissures of those airtight expectations, her humanity showed through.

She dressed up for Halloween with Sydney Leroux on more than a couple occasions and posed for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue three times. She executed an iconic, delightfully petty goal celebration at the 2019 World Cup, and cracked a joke onstage at the ESPY Awards when she was named Best Female Athlete. She basically manifested a friendship with Taylor Swift.

Morgan’s retirement isn’t all poetry, though. She will hang up her boots having missed out on the USWNT’s gold medal 2024 Summer Olympics run after not making the roster.

The Wave, who recently named Landon Donovan interim head coach, have dropped to 12th in the NWSL table. Morgan hasn’t been as prolific of a goal scorer lately. But there’s no such thing as a convenient time to retire.

There will always be work to do, but what Morgan has accomplished in her professional life is enough. What made the big celebrations in her career so sweet, Morgan told Girma, was that she could be more than “the athlete that everyone is just seeing you as, this robotic thing, this thing on this platform."

"I’m just like a sister, I’m a daughter, I’m a friend," she said. "I’m not just like a teammate and an athlete."

As the final whistle blows on her last professional match with the Wave, Morgan has reached that endpoint. She’ll be able to smile, though hopefully not for the first time in weeks.

She’ll be able, hopefully, to be human.