Professional Women's Soccer in America: Back in Action

As far back as I can remember, I have always been a sports fanatic, especially about team sports.

I love playing, watching, and talking about sports anytime the opportunity arises. Even as a little girl, I was always eager to join my brother and his friends in their games of pick-up basketball and football, and it was not unusual to find me out in the yard juggling my soccer ball for hours on end.

My generation of women athletes has been very fortunate and privileged compared to those who came before us; we have the opportunities they could only dream of.

I was lucky enough to be inspired by professional female athletes in many different sports: Lisa Leslie for basketball, Picabo Street for skiing, Annika Sorenstam for golf, Venus and Serena Williams for tennis, and my hero, Mia Hamm, for soccer.

Soccer is my favorite sport, so I was completely thrilled in 2001 to learn the news that a major league for women’s soccer was to be sponsored.

My soccer coach, Mr. Gonneville, organized an unforgettable day for us in June that year to drive down to Foxboro, Massachusetts to watch our first Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) match. We watched some of our heroes from the women’s national team that day, including Tiffany Milbrett and Kristine Lily.

Not only was this my first live experience ever at a professional sports event, but I also had never been more proud of the women playing soccer in front of me.

Unfortunately, that was the only WUSA game I was able to attend during its short tenure. Its sponsors pulled out due to a lack of interest in the league and attendance at the games.

In 2003, the league was gone, and once again my teammates and I were only able to watch our heroes play in matches during the Olympics or the World Cup, which are far less frequent than the amount played during a major league season and much harder to attend.

This spring, six years later, a professional soccer league for women is coming back.

What was once named the WUSA will now be known as Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), and to the delight of the soccer fan base in America, the women of the current national team will be spread out across the teams in the league.

Some of the big names headed to the pitch this spring are Christine Rampone, Abby Wambach, Lindsay Tarpley, Leslie Osborne, Shannon Boxx, Lori Chalupny, Marta of Brazil, Kristine Lilly, and Heather Mitts.

The teams have several cities in America to call home, including the Bay Area in California, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, Washington D.C., and in 2010 Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia will be added to the list.

Hopefully the league will receive the amount of air time on television that it deserves and fans from all over the nation will come out to the games.

I hope to make it up to Boston in May for a Breakers’ home game. But if not, I’ll be following them from home.