Mia Hamm’s commencement speech to the 2025 UNC graduates had all the elements I would hope for, including a beatdown of “that school eight miles down the road” and not one but two references to drinking a blue cup at He’s Not Here. While peppering her talk with these home team anecdotes, the soccer legend built her speech on three lessons drawn from her career, for, “What’s true about soccer is true about life.”
“And always and forever, you’ll be a part of this team. Our team. Graduates of the University of North Carolina,” Mia Hamm told graduates at Spring Commencement. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
Hamm also spoke about the value of diversity—yes, that political hot-button issue. In previous years, the idea of diversity would land like another commencement cliché, yet “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, are now buzzwords under attack by President Trump’s administration, which has pulled hundreds of millions of dollars from universities for the mere mention of these words. Such actions are political theater yet have devastating consequences. I, for one, believe the withdrawal of federal funds for life-saving medical research is unconscionable and immoral. I suspect Hamm is also concerned, if not outraged.
Along with her husband, former Major League baseball great Nomar Garciaparra, Hamm runs a non-profit, national organization dedicated to raising funds and awareness for families in need of a marrow or cord blood transplant. The issue is personal—her adopted brother, Garrett Hamm, died in 1997 at the age of 28 following complications during a bone marrow transplant intended to cure his rare form of anemia. Two years after his death, the soccer star started the Mia Hamm Foundation to “celebrate the lives of bone marrow recipients and raise awareness about the need for more bone marrow donor volunteers.”
Today, the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center is one of the partners of the Mia Hamm Foundation and is also the very same medical facility warning of the consequences of losing federal funds for cancer research. I hope that Tar Heels, Wolfpack, Demon Deacons, and even Dookies of all political stripes will let our elected officials know that cutting federal funds for cancer research is but one of the many tragic and unjust consequences of a misguided political power play.
So, I was heartened to hear Hamm say explicitly, “You need diversity.” She paused, as if waiting to see if this shot would score, and she received one of her loudest moments of applause, maybe even more raucous than recalling the 1992 women’s soccer smackdown of the Blue Devils in the NCAA championships.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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