There is no weight like the expectation of being the next star of the U.S. women's national team.
Alex Morgan shouldered that as a 20-year-old in 2009, when she joined her first senior training camp with the team. She hadn't yet debuted for the U.S., and already she was drawing comparisons to Mia Hamm, the legend who won a pair of World Cups and Olympics and served as the face of the first generation of American women's soccer players.
On Thursday, 15 years later, Morgan has announced she will retire after one final match on Sunday with the San Diego Wave FC, bringing an abrupt ending to a career that somehow managed to exceed astronomically high expectations on the field, all while redefining the sport off it.