The Women's World Cup is underway, with the US Women's team playing tonight!!
Here's where I get reflective:
As a girl growing up playing and loving the sport of soccer, it was a very rare occasion when we actually got to see professional women play soccer.
I mean, can you imagine playing/loving football or baseball and never seeing a professional (of your gender) play your sport? On TV? In front of fans?! As if!
We'd talk about Michelle Akers and then Mia Hamm in reverent tones, and via second and third-hand information, during our warmups. Such as, "my aunt saw Mich play last week. She scored three goals, one from the top of the 18." And "I heard she is so strong, her legs are the size of tree trunks." The stories often took on mythic proportions.
Anyway, I don't take the progress women's sports has made in my lifetime lightly. I mean, I was in college in 1996 when women's soccer was added as an Olympic sport, for Pete's sake! We've come so far, and there's so much further to go. (Don't get me started on the turf fields! Or the inequity in pay!)
So, support those awesome female athletes. What they don't and how they got up there isn't and wasn't easy.
GO TEAM USA!!!
Here's where I get reflective:
As a girl growing up playing and loving the sport of soccer, it was a very rare occasion when we actually got to see professional women play soccer.
I mean, can you imagine playing/loving football or baseball and never seeing a professional (of your gender) play your sport? On TV? In front of fans?! As if!
We'd talk about Michelle Akers and then Mia Hamm in reverent tones, and via second and third-hand information, during our warmups. Such as, "my aunt saw Mich play last week. She scored three goals, one from the top of the 18." And "I heard she is so strong, her legs are the size of tree trunks." The stories often took on mythic proportions.
Anyway, I don't take the progress women's sports has made in my lifetime lightly. I mean, I was in college in 1996 when women's soccer was added as an Olympic sport, for Pete's sake! We've come so far, and there's so much further to go. (Don't get me started on the turf fields! Or the inequity in pay!)
So, support those awesome female athletes. What they don't and how they got up there isn't and wasn't easy.
GO TEAM USA!!!
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