First we starved, then we feasted. Now it appears we’re pushing ourselves away from the table.
Perhaps Puget Sound’s appetite for watching professional soccer has sated, at least if the recent ambivalence toward the offering of extra courses is any indication.
Make no mistake, Seattle remains a North American attendance phenomenon, averaging about 6,000 more fans per game than the next-best crowd count in MLS. Sounders FC is currently pulling 40,236, and that number will only grow with CenturyLink Field’s full capacity available for four summer dates.
Every four years there’s an expectation that the United States will win the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and that’s no different in 2015, especially after America’s advancement to the final.
That expectation, that belief, is very much grounded in history and the U.S. National Team’s conquests early on. The reason we truly believe we will win is because, early on, we did.
Anson Dorrance, right, has made UNC women’s soccer the foremost collegiate sports dynasty with 22 national championships. (Courtesy UNC)
In 1991 Anson Dorrance took a young team to China and promptly won the first World Cup. A few years later they won the first Olympic Games and in 1999, of course, the USWNT doubled their number of World Cup stars at the Rose Bowl.
