We had just crossed the border from Canada into the United States when we saw a long line of cars heading the other way.Cars crept on and on for miles. We’d never seen anything like it before. “What’s going on in Canada?” we asked. That night we got it. It was the Women’s World Cup soccer semi-final, the United States vs. Germany, playing in Montreal. The crowd numbered 51,000, many traveling for miles to be there.
What an exciting game that was! But wait, the U.S. went on to the finals, winning against Japan - 5-2 - in Vancouver to a crowd of 53,000. The crowd went wild! Men hollered, women yelled, with red, white and blue painted on faces, printed on t-shirts, worn on crazy hats - and flags were waved in the air double time. With each amazing goal, everybody jumped up and down, including those of us who couldn’t sit still in front of our television screens. These women were magnificent. And the crowd knew it.
Not in recent memory had women’s competitive sports attracted such crowds – maybe never - though women have been cheering for men’s sports teams forever. Now men were cheering for female athletes, for everybody’s daughters, with the same enthusiasm with which they had cheered for everybody’s sons. How did this enormous change come about?
The answer is simple: Title IX, a law, passed in 1972 that required high schools and colleges to have equal sports opportunities for girls and women, as they had for boys and men. The U.S. world women’s soccer championship is one result. The number of girls participating in sports has multiplied several times since the law was passed. Being a female athlete is now an accepted norm.
But women’s sports still have a way to go. Why did women have to play on fake turf, rather than grass, as the men do? Why is their monetary reward miniscule as compared to that of male athletes?
There’s no reason for gender differences on the playing field, none. The US World Cup victory has demonstrated what we always hoped would happen: that women’s sports produce great athletes and attract huge crowds. But it doesn’t end there.
Think about how many little girls watched Carli Lloyd score those extraordinary goals, and Hope Solo perform as possibly the best goal keeper in the world. Instead of dressing up in princess dresses, little girls may wish to wear white soccer pants and shirts and decide, I want to be just like Carli Lloyd.
