Brandi Chastain agrees to donate brain for CTE research

Brandi Chastain, the U.S. women's soccer star who converted the winning penalty in the 1999 World Cup and famously tore off her shirt in celebration, is ready to leave a lasting legacy in the world of science.

The 47-year-old decided to donate her brain to the VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank (a joint project of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Boston University School of Medicine) when she dies to help researchers study the roots of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in female athletes.

"It is really about: How I can help impact soccer beyond scoring a goal in 1999 in the World Cup final? Can I do something more to leave soccer in a better place than it was when I began this wonderful journey with this game?" she told the Associated Press on Thursday.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease found in people who have experienced repetitive head trauma and mostly associated with boxing and football, but there is a lingering suspicion that heading the ball in soccer can also bring about similar symptoms and effects.

The U.S. Soccer Federation banned the act of heading a ball in games for children under 10 years old, and any child between the ages of 11 and 13 can only do it in practice.

Chastain, now a mother and youth coach, wonders if she has suffered concussions throughout her decades-long career.

"It's been a journey about education for me," she said. "I've been involved in sports for a long time, only up until recently, have people been talking about concussions, and then concussions specifically related to soccer. It's been mostly a football problem or a football issue. But it's not."

The researchers at Boston University have examined 307 brains, but only seven of them have come from women.

That's why Chastain has stepped forward: She wants the next generation to have the information she didn't.

"You just shook it off back then," she said.