Brandi Chastain

Collegiate

California Golden Bears, 1986

Chastain attended University of California, Berkeley where she played as a forward for the Golden Bears and scored 15 goals as a freshman. Following her first and only year with the Bears, she was named All-American and earned Freshman Player Of The Year honors by Soccer America. Soon after, she underwent reconstructive anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgeries on both knees which caused her to miss the 1987 and 1988 seasons.

Santa Clara Broncos, 1989–1990

After transferring to Santa Clara University ahead of the 1989 season, Chastain helped lead the Broncos to two consecutive Final Four NCAA College Cup appearances (for the first time ever) in 1989 and 1990. Chastain scored ten goals for the Broncos during the regular season. In 1990, she was a national scoring leader with 22 goals (50 points) and helped the Broncos to a 18–1–1 record. The same year, she was named the ISAA Player of the Year. She also won the Honda Sports Award as the nation's top soccer player. She graduated from SCU with a degree in communications in 1991.

International

Of her 192 international career caps, Chastain played 89 primarily as a defender but occasionally as a midfielder. On June 1, 1988, she earned her first cap for the United States women's national soccer team during a match against Japan. She scored her first international goal on April 18, 1991. After coming in as a substitute forward, she scored five…

Chastain has worked as a color commentator for soccer matches on two networks. She broadcast for NBC Sports during the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. Her work with ABC/ESPN has included Major League Soccer matches and being part of a rotation of studio commentators for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.

Chastain was born and raised in San Jose, California and began playing soccer at the age of eight. Because there was no girls' soccer team at Davis Junior High School, she played for the boys' soccer team after a successful tryout. Chastain attended Archbishop Mitty High School and helped lead the team to three consecutive Central Coast Section championships.

Chastain married Santa Clara Broncos head coach Jerry Smith on June 9, 1996. Their son was born in June 2006. She is stepmother to Smith's older son, Cameron. In March 2016, Chastain announced that she would donate her brain after death for concussion research. On December 10, 2019, Chastain was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.