This photo was taken July 4th 1999 at the Semi-Final match of (Norway vs China) World Cup at Foxboro Stadium in Massachusetts. That summer I was working up in Maine as a counselor at a girls summer camp (Camp Tapawingo) and once I figured out that I got every sunday off from camp, I and several of the other staff, bought tickets to the match. At the point of buying the tickets, we had no idea who would be playing, but I was pleased to find out it was going to be Norway vs. China. Several years prior, I had seen Norway play Brazil at the 1996 Olympics and always had a soft spot in my heart for the Scandinavians. So my friends and I all decided that was who we would root for. Plus, seeing a soccer game in Boston on the 4th of July (the WWC match was followed by a New England Revolution match) seemed like a pretty good away to spend the day.
Outside the stadium, I purchased a huge Norwegian flag to help set us apart from all the Chinese fans who seemed to litter the stadium en mass. And really, for the most part it just ended up as us being the only ones on our end cheering for Norway, which meant we had to cheer louder, and harder, and more obnoxious than all the Chinese, which was a hard task. At one point, I told my friends I was going to try to get my photograph on the front page of the Boston Herald.... and sure enough, at one point in the game a photographer waved me down to the field asking me my name. He was a photographer for the Boston Herald! Sadly though, the photo of me never ran as China ended up winning the match (meh) and they ran a photo of a crowd of Chinese supporters instead.
While at this game, the US women were playing their own Semi-Final match against Brazil in California. When it was announced that they had won over the loudspeaker, the whole crowd went crazy! The US women were on to the Final to be played six days later! At this point, all of us hooked on soccer and well, living up in Maine with no internet, no TV and no link to the outside world, we started to get a little nervous of how we were going to watch the game. In fact, game time soon approached and it was everything we could try to do to get find a TV and get it hooked up to watch the game. The unfortunate thing was, it's not like as a counselor you had hours to sit around and watch it. No, you had kids you had to teach and cabins that needed cleaning.
Thankfully though, the game stretched on into the dinner hour at camp and I and a few other counselors were able to sneak away from our table and our duties, and go to the Jr. Lodge to watch. I remember the game going past regulation time. I remember overtime. And then holy hell, do I remember those penalty kicks. I am sure that I was needed for something that evening at camp, but at that point it didn't matter. I was watching history, not only soccer history, but women's history and US history. That final match on July 10, 1999 was the most watched soccer match in US History and come hell or high water, in the back woods of Maine, I'm glad I had enough sense to find a way to watch it.
Since that evening, since that final PK by Brandi Chastain, US soccer has had trouble keeping the momentum. Sure, those ladies from the 1999 Team became household names and helped spurn on a whole new generation of fans and soccer players (some of whom are now those ladies that make up the US team) but the US as a whole has failed to continue with that dream of 1999. The leagues have faltered and failed, our team had yet to make it to another cup final in ten years, the attendance in the last World Cup held on American soil was low (which was in 2003 - but in all due respect the tournament was supposed to have been held in China and it got moved due to the SARS virus, so low attendance might have something to do with people not knowing it was going to happen? Anyways, seizing the opportunity, I took my mother to see a match at Columbus Stadium for her birthday). Regardless, hopefully all that ambivalence changed this past Sunday when the US beat Brazil in overtime and penalty kicks, twelve years to the day since the women of 1999 did. Hopefully people will find a way to gather around a TV this Sunday for the final against Japan.
Hopefully the names of Hope Solo, Abby Wambach, Heather O Riley and Megan Rapinoe will grace the tongues of US citizens and soccer fans the way those ladies from 1999 did. Hopefully there will be a whole new generation of girls eager to take on the world in future years.
Hopefully though, it won't take another twelve years for that to happen again.
Regardless, I'll be watching that whole time.
