WINNIPEG, Manitoba

If you watched the United States beat Australia in the team’s first game of the Women’s World Cup on Monday, maybe you saw the American goalkeeper wearing a blood-red uniform that glowed above the turf.

She dived to her left, as if springs were hidden inside her cleats, and slapped the ball away with hands that seemed enormous in her giant Day-Glo green gloves. She stalked her territory around the goal with a familiar sneer and shouted to her teammates, who were often a chasm away.

By her lonesome, she kept the Americans in the game early when the squad could have fallen behind, by two or even three goals. This keeper was so good that her team fawned over her afterward.

She “came up huge for us,” making “three saves for us that nobody else in the world can make,” said Megan Rapinoe, who led the offense with two goals.