Modesto native Tisha Venturini-Hoch talks Hall of Fame induction. ‘I was floored’

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Before hundreds of thousands cheered for her on the world’s biggest soccer stage, before becoming the first person to win a Women’s World Cup, an Olympic gold medal, four NCAA Division I titles and a women’s professional league championship and before being named to the National Soccer Hall of Fame, midfielder Tisha Venturini-Hoch’s soccer career began in Modesto.

But not with the girls.

Because there weren’t girls’ teams in the area when Venturini-Hoch first started, she played on boys’ teams for two years with her older brother, Todd. She played U-12 for two years alongside her older brother, in a time when that wasn’t too common.

Growing up in Modesto, she participated in many sports, including gymnastics, ballet and tennis. She says, “Whatever season it was, I played.” When she got to high school, she trimmed it down to three: volleyball, soccer and softball, where she honed talents that translated to her professional soccer career in surprising ways.

Her soccer journey has taken her all over the world and on Saturday, she will make another stop. In Frisco, Texas, where Venturini-Hoch, a member of the iconic 1999 Women’s World Cup championship soccer team and the first player in U.S. Soccer history to win championships at five levels, will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She is part of a 2024 class that includes Josh McKinney, Tim Howard and Francisco Marcos.

“I was floored, honestly,” Venturini-Hoch said on a Zoom call with media April 24. “I just kind of gave up on it and I knew the greatness of all these people that go in there, those are the top players of all time. … Just high-level players but more importantly they’re just awesome people. To be in a conversation with those people it’s the highest honor. It really is. And so I still am kind of shocked about it, I don’t know, I can’t quite wrap my head around it.”

Her brother Todd will be her presenter.

“Growing up, I just thought he was the greatest thing,” she said of her brother, who is 16 months her senior. “He loved sports. The neighborhood seemed to be all boys, his friends, and we would go out in the back and play pickup. … Todd would always say, ‘I’ll take my sister” then we’d kick everybody’s butt. … He was my first teammate.”

When making her college choice after a successful career at Grace Davis High School, she decided to travel to North Carolina to attend a women’s soccer powerhouse, UNC. There, she blossomed into one of the best players in the nation, winning four national titles and the 1994 Hermann Trophy.

In her career with the national team, she made 134 appearances, scoring 47 goals and contributing 21 assists before retiring in 2000. She became known for her ability to finish in the air, reading the flight of the ball to find the back of the net with perfectly timed headers.

If you ask her coach at the University of North Carolina Anson Dorrance, that translates directly to her time as a multi-sport athlete growing up. At Davis High, sure, she honed most of her skills on the soccer team, where she went 54-0-2, but she learned to track the ball on the softball field and worked on her timing on the volleyball court.

“Playing all those other sports helped develop different skills, Anson talks about it all the time,” Venturini-Hoch said. “I was never pressured or I didn’t have a bad coach that was terrible and yelled at me. I had a lot of support from the community. And my family was amazing, showing up to all of my stuff and encouraging me when I had a hard day and so all of that comes together.”

She also has one of the most iconic celebrations in U.S. soccer history, a backflip she landed during the 1999 World Cup after scoring off a free kick in the 76th minute against North Korea. It was her second goal of the match. Team USA won 3-0. She scored both with her trademark header. Her celebration after the second surprised coaches, media and teammates.

It’s something she is still asked about today.

“I took gymnastics as a kid and that’s all I could do. I couldn’t back bend, I couldn’t do the splits because I was stiff as a board but I could flip around,” she said. “I don’t know why I’d never done it before. I think that just the reality of being in that level of a game and scoring two goals in a World Cup game in a sold-out stadium … I don’t know, I was running and there was nobody around. So why not? Nobody knew. I had never talked about it and so they were all kind of like what the heck.

But she won’t be backflipping off the stage after her Hall of Fame induction.

“The problem is now everybody wants me to do it. And there’s no way that’s happening,” she said laughing.

Just three years earlier, she became the first women’s soccer player to score an Olympic goal. She scored the first goal in a 3-0 win over Denmark on July 21, 1996, in Orlando Fla. The sport made its debut in the Summer Games that year.

Since retiring, she has continued to be an ambassador for women’s sports. In 2020, she became an investor in the National Women’s Soccer League’s Los Angeles-based club, Angel City FC. She is a fan of the Caitlin Clarks of today’s sports landscape. She is proud of the platform they are given and how they shine in the spotlight.

Soccer has taken Venturini-Hoch all over the world, it has allowed her to play on the biggest stages in front of millions of people and vaulted her into an American soccer legend and one of Modesto’s sports legends. And now, the Hall of Fame.

But at the end of the day, she knows soccer is still a game. While winning is great, being a good teammate and having fun is what matters most.

That’s what she said to hundreds of Modesto-area children and parents at a soccer camp at Mary Grogan Community Park in Mid-April. Venturini-Hoch brought her two national teammates and women’s soccer legends Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly as their TeamFirst Soccer Academy partnered with MYSA-Ajax.

“Throughout my career, I played on all these amazing teams and I had superstars like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy and Michelle Akers, but they were always more concerned about the team than themselves,” Venturini-Hoch said. “We preach teamwork. We preach positivity, be positive, bring good energy, work hard, and then the having fun part. If you watch us, we’re always laughing and joking. … Those are the messages we want kids to have and that are important. It’s hard to keep in mind all that when winning is pushed so hard and ‘I gotta get a scholarship’ and ‘I want to be on the national team’ that you lose sight of that it’s a game and you want to play with your teammates and establish relationships and have fun along the way.”

All of that Venturini-Hoch has done and more. From Modesto to the US Women’s National Team to the Hall of Fame.