By Colleen Kane
Enquirer staff writer

Heather Mitts from the U.S. Olympic women's soccer team with a group of girls on the St. Ursula Academy soccer team. (Tony Jones/The Enquirer)

Whitney Scott, 11, a forward on the St. Cecelia Crusaders of Independence, KY, dribbles the ball. (Meggan Booker/The Enquirer)

IF YOU GO

The U.S. Women's National Team's Fan Celebration Tour will be in Cincinnati. • When: 4 p.m. Sunday. • Where: Paul Brown Stadium. • Tickets: Start at $15. Order online at ussoccer.com or charge by phone at (513) 562-4949. FOR MORE: Perceptions, opportunities changed

Bob Sheehan will never forget the day. On a little soccer field that still sits next to a golf range on Route 32, the former St. Ursula coach sent a cute little 5-foot-1, 100-pound girl into her first varsity game against Purcell Marian.

Sheehan's sister watched from across the field and thought, "Bob, what are you doing? This girl is going to get killed!"

But then she saw what Sheehan already had seen - and what the rest of the world soon would see.

"All of the sudden the ball came to her, and she was off," Sheehan said. "And my sister said, 'Boy, she can play.' "

About 12 years later, in a world of women's soccer so different from that day, Sheehan watched a different St. Ursula soccer team swoon over that little girl, now a woman, an athlete, an Olympic gold medal winner, a role model.

"Their smiles were ear to ear, absolutely beaming," Sheehan said of the St. Ursula pep rally Sept. 17. "They were just so excited. They've been hearing the Heather Mitts story for 10 years now."

Mitts, 26, will return to town again Sunday with the rest of the U.S. Women's National Team for their Fan Celebration Tour.

The 10-city circuit is a celebration of the team's gold-medal win at this summer's Olympics.

It's also a tribute to the retirement of women's soccer pioneers Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm.

But it's also a ceremonial handoff of leadership from those veterans to this decade's younger soccer stars, Mitts included. It's their turn to keep U.S. women's soccer thriving, and as Mitts saw that Friday morning at St. Ursula a few weeks ago, to carry on as the heroes of girls here and everywhere.

"It was just a little overwhelming. I was back where I started in high school. It's like I had come full circle," Mitts said. "The girls look up to me in a way. It's a neat thing. I realize every day that I've won a gold medal, but being there, celebrating and being honored, my emotions caught up with me. I'm so lucky to be in the position I'm in."

Mitts a hyper youngster

It all started because of too much energy.

"I was really, really hyper," Mitts said. "My parents wanted to put me in every sport possible so I would come home at the end of the day a little less energized."

Everybody wanted her to play for them - gymnastics, tennis, swimming coaches, said Mitts' mother, Jan Peck. She could out-swim all the older boys. She was one of the city's top 12-year-old tennis players. But soccer, the sport she took up when she was 6 years old, was the one she loved.

"Soccer was the only sport that I never got tired of," Mitts said. "There are so many things about it. I just love playing soccer."

So by her freshman year at St. Ursula, she decided that it would be the only sport for her. She made the varsity team midway through that year, helped her team to a state championship her sophomore year and was named an all-state player twice by the time she graduated.

"People depended on her," Peck said. "You could just tell on the sidelines that everyone had confidence that Heather would score or get the ball."

"What I felt set Heather apart was her ability to anticipate," Sheehan said. "She always seemed to know where the next play was. She was a half-step ahead of everybody mentally as well as physically. Her ability to be where she needs to be is uncanny."

Sheehan was one of many coaches along the way that shaped Mitts. He showed her discipline, Mitts said. The University of Florida, her next stop, whipped her into shape, beginning with her first week of collegiate training that she didn't prepare for properly over the summer, Peck said.

"I kept saying, 'Heather you have to look at this workout,' and she didn't take it very seriously," Peck, a personal trainer, said. "I think it embarrassed her. From that day on, every time she came home, it was just non-stop (training). It was a big change."

Mitts became a regular starter all four years and an All-American on Florida's 1998 national championship team. She had set Florida records for starts, minutes played and consecutive starts by the time her college career ended with a loss in the NCAA Tournament in 1999.

"When we lost that (final) game, I thought that was it," Mitts said. "I cried forever. I thought, 'What am I going to do now?' "

Joining the 91ers

You could say the stars were aligned just right.

That first start of Mitts' freshman year of high school that Sheehan described came one year after a different breakthrough - the first women's World Cup that was won by current U.S. National Team players Hamm, Foudy, Fawcett, Brandi Chastain and Kristine Lilly. Before Mitts' college freshman year, those same players, "the 91ers" as they're known now, won the 1996 Olympic gold medal, and in Mitts' final year of college soccer, they won the 1999 World Cup, sparking interest in women's soccer nationally.

Their success set off the creation of a women's professional soccer league, the WUSA, which had its first draft in December 2000, the same year Mitts graduated from college. Mitts was selected in the second round by the Philadelphia Charge.

"It's all been kind of a whirlwind from there," Mitts said.

A whirlwind both in soccer and in life. She played three years with the Charge. She was called up to the U.S. national team. After failing to make last year's World Cup team, she helped win a gold medal at the Athens Olympics, on the same team as those that paved the way for new women's soccer players like her.

"When we won the whole thing, I went to my parents and broke down and started crying. All the work we put into it paid off," Mitts said. "To be able to play alongside Mia, Julie and Joy, to learn from them not only on but off the field, it was really unbelievable. I'm very, very lucky."

Amid training and games, Mitts has modeled and been named the "Hottest Female Athlete" by ESPN. She's done broadcasting work that she hopes to continue after her soccer career. She's dated high-profile athletes, including current boyfriend, Miami Dolphins quarterback A.J. Feeley, her "best friend." This November, she will be featured with several Olympic medal winners in a Men's Fitness magazine spread. And her agent Michael Steinberg said they're working on a number of national endorsement deals, to be finalized after the Victory Tour is finished.

Becoming an influence

Pete Sampras. Boris Becker. Andre Agassi. These were Mitts' role models athletically as a child. All tennis players, all male.

"I don't think there were all that many women (athletes) as role models," Mitts said.

Twenty years later, her veteran teammates are recognized as perhaps the most important female athletic influences of this generation.

"They've opened a lot of doors," said 22-year-old U.S. National Team member Aly Wagner, Mitts' roommate in residency. "I think about growing up, playing soccer and loving it, and I never thought I could make a living out of it. But all the strides they've made have made it so we can have fun for a living. ... They've set a tremendous example, so we understand how to step into their roles, how to continue to further women's sports."

Mitts is a natural at taking leadership. Aside from pure talent, she has something else that draws people to her: charisma. She's good-looking, well-spoken, cheerful and friendly. Just thinking of her makes Sheehan smile.

"(The girls) are totally enamored with her," said St. Ursula coach Danielle (Beziat) Newman, a teammate of Mitts in 1993. "When you have someone like that who has the same roots as you did, and went through the same system, it's a really big motivator. They see Heather and what she's done and say, 'We can do this.' "

So Mitts realizes how important it is that she remain that role model. It's why she tries to answer all the little girls' questions and e-mails that get sent her way and occasionally keeps in touch with the current St. Ursula squad. And it's one of the things that will push her along to get better and play more as the future of women's professional soccer is being decided.

"I'm the most motivated I've ever been in my life, to be starting, playing, making a difference for the team," Mitts said. "... I have some big shoes to fill. Hopefully I can carry along that legacy."

E-mail ckane@enquirer.com