World Cup win provides perspective on women’s sports
One of the gifts a long career gives you is perspective, and every once in a while, when you reach an appropriate vista, it’s good to take a moment and look at just how far you’ve come.
Watching the U.S. Women’s National Team win their third World Cup soccer championship is just that kind of promontory. And the view is good.
I wasn’t looking for any special meaning when I sat down to watch the final with Japan. I’d done the same thing for each of the United States matches from Canada, as well as most of the games involving Germany, France and England. I enjoy the brand of soccer these games bring to a screen near me and I have friends and family who enjoy watching the games with me.
I became a steadfast fan of the women’s national team in 1999. I knew one of the players, Michelle Akers Stahl, and I liked the fierce competitiveness of the squad.
That World Cup was a transformative time for women’s sport. For the first time on a national stage, people began to take women seriously as athletes and as competitors.
My entire career has taken place after the advent of Title IX, the groundbreaking legislation signed into law on June 23, 1972, by President Richard Nixon prohibiting sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial aid, and I’ve watched the growth curve of women’s sports in real time.
In the beginning, girls and women’s sports were pretty brutal, but you don’t go from zero to 60 without touching every mph along the way. It got better.
And to be blunt, it got better because women refused to accept second-class status. To the great surprise of some extremely shortsighted men, it turned out that both sexes have a fiercely competitive nature.
I covered the pioneers in those early days. It was a little like watching a newborn foal stand up for the first time. And just like that foal, they quickly learned to walk. And then, to run.
Some of those pioneers confided their hopes for the future. They were glad to play, they would say, but what drove them were their hopes for their daughters.
I watched those daughters blossom. And I watched the daughters of those daughters break the mold and forge a way of life none of us imagined in the days before Billie Jean King kicked a male chauvinist pig around the Houston Astrodome on national television.
And then came 1999.
Yes, people still talked about how adorable Mia Hamm was, but they also saw just how good she was on a soccer pitch. They saw Akers Stahl push herself to complete exhaustion and collapse on the field – a testament to drive and grit generally reserved for men. And while folks fixated on the image of Brandi Chastain ripping off her jersey to celebrate that incredible, game-winning penalty kick, they looked around the stands and saw the next generation with tears of joy running down their cheeks, eager to join the fray.
What makes me proud of the progress we’ve made is the way this team has been portrayed and, yes, even marketed.
It was great to see and hear debate over how coach Jill Ellis put together her roster for the Cup – debate over which players should have been on the roster who should have been left off and how this group would compare to the tournament’s other powers.
It was powerful to hear commentators embrace just how great the U.S. defense was throughout the tournament, celebrating a group of players who are too easily overlooked. Everyone got their due.
Hope Solo, bless her heart, made people realize that there is a flip side of tough and cocky for everyone, not just men.
Megan Rapinoe, celebrated for incredible creativity on the field, used the spotlight to encourage her young fans that “Being yourself is the most important thing.” “Pinoe,” who plays professional soccer for the Seattle Reign, was perhaps the first prominent athlete to come out as gay (in 2012) and be met by a general public saying “Yeah, so?”
And there were two moments so unique they almost flew under the radar.
Carli Lloyd, the leader of this team in every way, running to the sideline in the 79th minute of the match to give Abby Wambach the captain’s arm band. This was passing the torch in reverse – a touching tribute. Lloyd said later that she wanted to make sure Wambach’s final game in a World Cup was as the team’s captain. And even more touching, after the game was over and before ascending the steps to hold the trophy, Wambach slipped off the armband and wrapped it around the arm of 40-year-old Christie Rampone, the last remaining member of the 1999 team.
And finally there was Wambach running to the stands after the match to embrace her wife. It was an expression of pure joy and celebration. No one exploded and no one’s traditional marriage was threatened by it. It just was.
As it should be.