If you’ve been keeping pace with the US women’s soccer team’s unprecedented success in the Women’s World Cup at the moment, you’ll no doubt be aware of the presence of one star player by the name of Alex Morgan.

The USWNT captain and Olympic champion is changing the face of women’s sport right now thanks to her unique striking talent and fight for equal pay in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, and if you watched her incredible five goals in the history-making win against Thailand in the second stage of group play, you’ll know that Morgan is a real force to be reckoned with.

It won’t have escaped your notice, then, that the star athlete always wears a pink headband every time she plays a soccer match. It’s the same headband that made an appearance in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, as well as the 2011 and 2015 World Cups.

While the signature accessory has come to be part of Morgan’s USP, it turns out that there’s a very special reason behind the headband too.

According to one report, the Orlando Pride striker has been sporting the headband ever since her college days at at University of California, Berkeley, where she gained a degree in political economy (yep, she’s multi-talented!) It was there that she met her future husband, Servando Carrasco, who now plays as a midfielder for LA Galaxy.

While they were dating in Morgan’s sophomore year in 2006, Carrasco’s mother was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. As a show of support for her mother-in-law, Morgan started to wear a pink headband to raise awareness of the disease.

Happily, Carrasco’s mother fought off the cancer, and beat uterine cancer two years later too. But Morgan continued to wear the pink headband for breast cancer visibility, which has now become something of a rite of passage for the star before she takes to the pitch.

Interestingly, the pink headband is actually made from prewrap, a special type of athletic tape that’s typically used underneath stronger medical bandages to prevent the skin from chafing.

If that sounds complicated, one look at this Alex Morgan headband tutorial will prove it couldn’t be simpler to recreate. You simply rip off a piece of the tacky gauze, and knot it around your head. After a little while, it rolls over to create the look of one of those skinny headbands that we’ve all bought to keep stray hairs at bay when we’re kicking around the house.

Don’t forget to look out for it when the USWNT face Spain in their next World Cup game on Monday 24 June, because Morgan will no doubt be increasing her goal tally in style. 

Image: Getty