USWNT: My Heroes Then and Now
How their fight became my own.
Women’s soccer wasn’t really a thing in rural Iowa in the 1990s. I’m sure there were youth rec leagues, but I don’t remember any of my friends or the neighborhood girls playing in them, and the only “pitch” we knew was something that happened on a softball field.
That all changed on July 10, 1999.
That was the day the U.S. Women’s National Team won its second World Cup in thrilling fashion, a 5-4 penalty kick victory, in front of a sell-out crowd of more than 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
That also happened to be the day a then-12-year-old girl in rural Iowa was parked in front of her family’s television watching her first-ever soccer match.
I still get goosebumps thinking about 12-year-old me watching Brandi Chastain rip off her jersey and slide to her knees in pure elation. Because what my young eyes saw in that moment was an entire stadium celebrating the accomplishment of a strong and powerful woman. And perhaps more importantly, in the days that followed, my young eyes saw an entire nation celebrating the accomplishments of a strong and powerful team of women.
But the more 12-year-old me consumed about the USWNT, the more 12-year-old me realized that something was awry. I learned about how in the late-1980s, the USWNT was given hand-me-down kits from the men’s national team and was expected to sew on their own badges. I read about how, after winning our nation’s first World Cup, the women on the 1991 squad were given a $500 bonus (yes, I said five hundred dollars).
Surely the country I watched celebrate the 1999 World Cup victory wouldn’t stand for such inequities, right?
Little did I know.
The fight for equal pay, equal conditions and equal treatment began long before “Brandi Chastain” became a household name. But July 10, 1999, is when that fight began for me.
I’m now 36 years old, but I still watch the USWNT through the eyes of 12-year-old me. Because for decades, I’ve watched the women of the USWNT continue to carry the same banner that I first saw them carry in 1999.
While many of the injustices of decades past have been rectified, many still remain. So the women of the USWNT keep marching on.
As Christen Press said upon receiving the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the ESPY’s last week, “This is a tremendously exciting time for our team and for women’s sports at large. As everyone who’s been there for us throughout this long journey toward equality knows, our fight is not over. When you play for the United States Women’s National team, you are handed a torch. You’re given the responsibility to carry that torch as far and as high as possible for the sake of women’s equality.”
In just a few hours, the USWNT will begin another quest in front of sell-out crowds on an international stage in the 2023 World Cup. And this 36-year-old woman will be watching with her 12-year-old eyes, cheering for a victory, no doubt, but forever grateful for and proud of the women on the pitch in the red, white and blue.
Well said. I grew up around soccer but the girls in my family and extended weren’t offer the opportunity to do what the make family members could do. Yet, my nieces finally did and it makes my happy to know that my dad before he died loved to see his granddaughters play the sport that defined many moments in his life, including officiating a game that Pele played. Well done Steph C.
I certainly relate to this column. I, too, had dreams of being a sports writer, already in high school - several decades before you came to realize it wasn’t a “girls’ profession.” And, the only varsity sport for girls was tennis while the boys had multiple choices. So by the time Title IX passed I saw a breakthrough long in coming. I had a budding athletic daughter who thought 6-player girls basketball was silly, so we set about getting that changed to “real” basketball. Oh…that daughter became a soccer All-American and later became the college’s Sports Information Director. My dreams were just a bit too early!