USA women’s soccer team is at World Cup to win, not sing for Megyn Kelly and Nikki Haley | Opinion

Back when my son attended Goddard High School, I played in a golf tournament to raise money for the band.

While we were loading our clubs in our carts, from somewhere we could hear distant, muffled strains of the National Anthem. So everybody stopped what they were doing, froze in place and put their hands over their hearts until it was finished.

Then, the two band teachers came out from wherever they’d been practicing the Star Spangled Banner on their trumpets, and we did it all over again.

I was reminded of that exercise this week as I’ve read and considered the backlash against the women of the U.S. World Cup soccer team, who have come under fire from right-wing media and politicians for — get this — not singing the anthem when it’s played before their matches.

If this were real football (the American kind) I’d say they were moving the goal posts.

I’ve watched, or participated in, countless sporting contests where the National Anthem was played before the game, and the only one expected to sing it was the person with a microphone.

Never once was there an expectation that the athletes had to sing along.

Even when the event announcer would ask the crowd to join in, it was an invitation, not an order. Some people sang, some didn’t, nobody cared.

That is, nobody cared until a week ago, when the USA soccer women beat the shorts off the team from Vietnam, 3-0.

All of a sudden, the right wing was all a-twitter over an imaginary “snub” of the anthem.

Now, when I was growing up, my school trained us to stand respectfully for the anthem and salute the flag when saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Saluting during the anthem was optional, neither encouraged nor discouraged.

But apparently that’s not good enough for some people in 2023 America, because that’s exactly what our USA soccer team did on the field.

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, trying to become more than a rounding error in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, scolded our soccer players for, well, something or other.

“They were born in the freest, fairest country in the world that has rewarded their hard work,” tweeted the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor. “They should remember that blessing & the men & women (like my husband) proudly defending it next time the national anthem plays.”

Coincidentally, Haley’s campaign called our house Friday with a recorded message promising “bold leadership” and asking for money. Note to Nikki, if you want to talk soccer, call my work number at the bottom of this story.

Haley was far from the worst of the bunch.

Enter Megyn Kelly, formerly of Fox News and NBC, who appointed herself head cheerleader for the anti-USA Soccer crowd.

She chided the team on her Sirius XM show and called them “losers” on a foreign TV network, Sky News, the Australian equivalent of Fox News.

In doing so, she showed her true colors to be red and yellow, gushing about Vietnam’s team: “The Vietnamese, who we crushed, were out there, hands on the hearts, singing loudly, you know, all together.”

The reason might be this, from Human Rights Watch: “Vietnam systematically suppresses basic civil and political rights. The government, under the dictatorial one-party rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam, severely restricts the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, movement, and religion.”

Megyn Kelly needs to pick her role models more carefully.

The only anthem controversy I’ve ever heard of in the men’s World Cup wasn’t about us, but Iran.

At last year’s World Cup in Qatar, the Iranian men didn’t sing their anthem as ordered, an apparent show of support for a budding human-rights movement back home in the Islamic Republic.

That got them a visit from agents of the Revolutionary Guard, who told them to start singing, or else their families would be arrested and tortured.

From then on, they sang like birds. Who wouldn’t?

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between our country and countries like Iran and Vietnam.

We have a flag code that suggests citizens “should” put their hand over their hearts for the National Anthem. It doesn’t say anything about anyone having to sing it.

And “should” isn’t “shall.” The only “shall” is in the First Amendment, which starts “Congress shall make no law” either forbidding or compelling speech.

Our women’ soccer team honored America by winning the last two World Cups. After tying a fellow powerhouse, the Netherlands, 1-1 on Wednesday, they’re fairly well-positioned to try for the three-peat.

Their next game is Tuesday, against Portugal.

To our team, our American team, I’d say: “You got this.” And when it comes to the opportunistic haters attacking you back home, we’ve got your back.