Megan Rapinoe

2012 Olympic gold medalist and former Portland Pilots women’s soccer standout Megan Rapinoe will attend Sunday’s (October 28 at 1 p.m.) game against Loyola Marymount at Merlo Field, and the midfielder will be honored with a halftime ceremony. Rapinoe will also take part in a post-game autograph zone.

Olympic gold medalist Megan Rapinoe returns to University of Portland

The 5’6, bleached blonde might not have stood apart from any of the other 3,000 soccer fans wearing big rain jackets Sunday. She cheered when her team made goals, talked possessions with her sister.

But soccer star Megan Rapinoe had something that no other fan watching the University of Portland pitch Sunday afternoon did: A gold medal in her pocket.

Sunday was Rapinoe’s first return to her alma mater since she helped the U.S. women’s Olympic team defeat Japan in the soccer final.

As a college midfielder there, Rapinoe was named West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year, a Soccer America First Team All-American and West Coast Conference Player of the Year. She played an undefeated season her freshman year. She missed two seasons due to ACL injuries, but the school -- that field, in particular -- feels like home.

“It just makes me so nostalgic,” she said, watching this year’s team move the ball through heavy rain. “I want to be playing. The field looks beautiful.”

Rapinoe lived in Chicago for two years after graduating in 2008, but she’s most spent most of the past four years traveling. After the World Cup and Olympics, her life slowed down a bit. She moved back to Portland with twin sister Rachael a month ago. They live in the Pearl District.

“I always wanted to come back here,” she said.

The school honored Rapinoe at half-time. Its makeshift band did a combination percussion a capella singing of “We Love You Megan,” to the tune of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”

And she signed one giant autograph over the back of freshman Sky Nelson’s gold jacket. Nelson wears the jackets during games. When the team scores, Nelson carries a UP flag and runs around the stadium in nothing but the jacket and a kilt.

Unlike Rapinoe’s medal, though, he said, “This isn’t actually real gold.”

She wanted the ball. Megan Rapinoe usually does. “I want to enjoy the ball,” is the way she puts it, and she has always trusted that her teammates and the fans of U.S. soccer will delight in the glorious things she does with it.

When Carli Lloyd finally passed her the ball on that July afternoon in Dresden, Rapinoe had all of two seconds to enjoy it.

“There wasn’t a lot of thought put into it,” she says. “I just kicked it as hard as I could.

“I didn’t see Abby, but I knew she was going to be there. She’s always in the box.”

When it comes to the unforgettable moments of sports, you can have your Pablo Sandovals, your Taoufik Makhloufis and your Rose Bowl victories.

I’ll take Rapinoe’s cross to Abby Wambach in the 2011 World Cup. The U.S. was down a goal, down a woman and down to its last desperate minute in the quarterfinal match against Brazil.

Seventeen months later, I still shiver watching Rapinoe launch the pass that Wambach headed in at the far post.

“You play for those euphoric moments,” she says.

When Rapinoe was honored by her alma mater Sunday at the University of Portland’s Merlo Field, she didn’t need to travel too far to be feted by her fans and the rain.

She’s now living in the Pearl District with the gold medal she won at the London Olympics, the scene of another performance that added to the “Pinoe” legend.

In the United States 4-3 victory over Canada in August, Rapinoe and Christine Sinclair — her former Pilot teammate — scored the game’s first five goals.

“We never had a moment when we looked at each other,” Rapinoe said. “I don’t know if we had time; it was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

“I do remember thinking when Sinc scored the second one, ‘C’mon!’ It was the game of her life in the biggest game of her life.”

Rapinoe is similarly wired. She concedes she didn’t develop a consistent training regimen until she reached UP in 2005 and teamed with Sinclair to win the Pilots’ second national championship.

She played basketball, not soccer, for her Redding, Calif., high school, driving 160 miles once or twice a week to play club soccer in Sacramento. Her practice schedule was chaotic.

“Maybe that’s the reason I’m a gamer,” Rapinoe says, “I just had the game.”

If the late Clive Charles — who convinced Rapinoe and her sister, Rachel, to choose UP over Santa Clara — could deal with her stubborn, instinctive commitment to “enjoy the ball,” other coaches have been less impressed.

“I play a certain style. I’m not willing to compromise that part of me,” Rapinoe says. “I took the approach that this is the way I want to play and if that lands me on the bench, that’s your (the coach’s) choice.

“But that still lands me on the bench. And that’s not where I want to be.”

Rapinoe came off that bench to send that unforgettable World Cup cross to Wambach.

She came off the bench early in the 2012 Summer Games to score a memorable goal against Colombia — she celebrated by grabbing a field-level microphone and breaking into Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” — and counter Sinclair’s first two goals in the epic match with Canada.

I suspect Rapinoe will be starting when the U.S. national team plays Ireland on Nov. 28 at Jeld-Wen Field. She’s a little miffed that she’ll miss Springsteen’s performance that night at the Rose Garden, but other than that, Rapinoe will enjoy the moment.

She’s happy. Happy with her long-term girlfriend, Sarah Walsh. Happy to be one of the 10 nominees for FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year. Happy to call the Pearl District home.

And happy that she’s invariably in the middle of the game’s euphoric moments.

“Some people play best when they’re frustrated and mad,” Rapinoe says. “I play my best when I’m happy. I really, truly do.”