The US women’s team star caused quite a stir by kneeling for the national anthem. But Rapinoe says she has no regrets fighting for what’s right

Megan Rapinoe will no longer kneel during the national anthem. In accordance with the US Soccer policy released earlier this month – a policy that was aimed in her general direction – Rapinoe will stand with both feet planted, squared up to the flag.

But Rapinoe won’t be entirely silent about it.

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The 31-year-old veteran of the Women’s World Cup champion team has long been outspoken on a range of social causes. Rapinoe has advocated for gay rights, and she was one of five players whose names were on the lawsuit filed against US Soccer alleging wage discrimination early last year.

None of that struck a national nerve quite like her decision to take a knee in solidarity with then 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and as a protest against social inequality last fall. It was one thing to do so while playing for the Seattle Reign, her club team. It was quite another while representing her country, adding another layer to a story already cleaving the United States down partisan lines.

Looking back now, it wasn’t the blowback that caught her off guard, Rapinoe says. “What has surprised me the most, especially post-election, is that people are still sort of arguing against it. It’s really obvious that we have very serious inequality in this country across many different spectrums,” Rapinoe tells the Guardian. “Yes, we can talk about the form of protest, or the way it’s done, or this or that. But it’s still not really the conversation that I think we desperately need to have more of in this country.”

The message she was attempting to convey was somewhat buried by the feverish debate that resulted from her protest prior to the US women’s team’s friendly against Thailand last September. “I understand that some people turned their ears off right away,” Rapinoe concedes.

And the drawback of taking such a public stance has become more obvious in the past couple of weeks. Kaepernick has become something of an NFL pariah since cutting ties with San Francisco at the beginning of this month. He remains unsigned, and the very mention of his name was greeted by jeers at a recent rally hosted by Donald Trump.

Rapinoe, for her part, is no longer an automatic call-up. She was invited to the team’s January camp but, still feeling the effects of a knee injury suffered in late 2015 and having gone months without competitive action, did not make the roster for the SheBelieves Cup in early March. She did, however, received a call-up this week for USA’s upcoming friendlies against Russia.

She quickly downplays the idea that her SheBelieves Cup omission had anything to do with her earlier protests – gestures that have since been condemned by USSF president Sunil Gulati and USWNT coach Jill Ellis – freely admitting that her game isn’t currently at its sharpest.

Still, asked whether she would have done anything differently, knowing what she knows now, Rapinoe does briefly hesitate. “I don’t think there’s any perfect way to protest. I think if there was something else being done, something else would have been said about it. I can’t look back and say that I would have done this different, this different or this different.

“I can sleep at night knowing that I genuinely tried to have a really important conversation, or at least tried to open it up. I think I came to it with an open mind, an open heart and tried to get as many people to talk about it as I could.”

Rapinoe has only gradually grown into her role as a social activist. Though she now describes using her platform as a world champion as a “responsibility” to advance her message, she hasn’t always been as comfortable on the public stage.

She was always a brash, confident player, says Stephanie Cox, who played alongside Rapinoe during their youth soccer days, at the University of Portland and for the Reign, never passing up an opening for a shot from distance or an audacious pass. That persona wasn’t as evident off the field back then.

“It wasn’t like she was a social activist back in college,” Cox says. “She was just trying to figure out who she was. She’s definitely grown into that. It hasn’t always been the case.”

Rapinoe describes coming out during her freshman year at UP as a breakthrough, a transformative event that set the course for personal growth that followed. It set the stage for the gay rights advocacy she pursued during the earlier years of her professional career, and the scope has widened from there.

“The more I’ve been able to learn about gay rights and equal pay and gender equity and racial inequality, the more that it all intersects,” Rapinoe says. “You can’t really pick it apart. It’s all intertwined. God forbid you be a gay woman and a person of color in this country, because you’d be really fucked.

“As I got more into gay rights, I got more into equal pay and you just see that it’s all connected. You can’t really speak out on one thing and not another without it not being the full picture. We need to talk about a larger conversation in this country about equality in general and respect – especially with the recent election and subsequent narrative that’s coming from the White House right now.”

Though their priorities have clashed recently, Rapinoe describes her dynamic with the US federation as healthy, if complicated.

“I think I’ve probably been a little bit more of a thorn in their side the past two years,” Rapinoe says. “But no, I feel like I have a good relationship. It’s not a me-versus-them thing at all. In terms of the equal pay, we want what is fair and equitable and what we think we deserve. In terms of the kneeling, that was choice that I made and they made a choice to make the rule and I’ll respect that.”

What cause she takes up next or where, exactly, she goes from here, are open questions. Rapinoe will now stand during the national anthem, both with the Reign and the US national team. She says she wasn’t planning on kneeling any more anyway, that she’d made her point.

Her focus is now on checking off further boxes on her list of professional accomplishments. Rapinoe badly desires to represent her country at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, where she played for two seasons with Lyon. Japan 2023 is in her sights, too, even if she’ll be 37 when it kicks off.

It’s hard to imagine her shying from the spotlight in the meantime, wherever that may lead.

“The point of the protest was sort of proven last year, when other players did it,” Rapinoe says. “I wasn’t going to do that forever anyway. It won’t inwardly burn. You have to change. You have to adapt.

“I hope to continue to have the conversation. Hopefully people who disagree with me continue to have the conversation and we can kind of open each other up even more than we already have.”