How US women's soccer team changed the game 20 years ago

PARIS – There was no professional women’s soccer league 20 years ago, and the WNBA was just starting its third season. If you wanted the jersey of a female athlete, you pretty much had to make it yourself.

The idea that hundreds of thousands of people would pack stadiums across the USA, while millions more gathered around their TVs at home, for women’s soccer? Or any women’s sporting event, for that matter? Well, few could really imagine it once fully awake.

Yet from the moment the U.S. women’s bus began to slow on its way to the Meadowlands, caught in traffic with all the other people eager for the start of the 1999 World Cup, it was clear the third edition of the tournament would be a watershed moment for women’s sports. For all women, really.

For the next three weeks, Americans filled NFL-sized stadiums to capacity or close to it, yelling themselves hoarse for Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Kristine Lilly, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain and the rest of the group that would come to be known as “the '99ers.” Little girls painted their faces and told their parents they wanted to be soccer players. When Chastain ripped off her jersey after converting a penalty kick to give the Americans the World Cup title, her chiseled abs and defined arms gave new meaning to the term “strong woman.”

“Once the World Cup started rolling, I think we thought, 'Oh, this is really happening on this big of a stage.’ But our eyes had to see it,” Chastain told USA TODAY Sports. “Even though our hearts were telling us we could do this and people would love it, as soon as we saw it, that first game, it was, `Oh, it’s happening. This is bigger than we thought.’ ”

It continues to be.

As the current U.S. women’s team prepares for the World Cup, which begins Friday in Paris with France taking on South Korea, the impact of those ‘99ers is omnipresent. Of the 24 teams playing, only Jamaica does not have a domestic league. The U.S. league, the NWSL, sent more players to the World Cup than any other league.

WHAT BRA? What ever happened to Chastain's famous sports bra from 1999?

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Key members of the 1999 U.S. women's team

Granted, two other U.S. leagues folded before the NWSL was formed, but it is in its seventh season, with nine teams, and Los Angeles is likely to soon make 10.  

For the first time, Nike made a jersey designed specifically for women, rather than giving them a smaller version of the men’s. Every U.S. player’s jersey is mass-marketed, and it’s no longer unusual to see little boys show up for games with Alex Morgan or Carli Lloyd’s names on their backs.

“When I see my kids get so excited when they put on their (Megan) Rapinoe jersey or their Morgan jersey or their (Tobin) Heath jersey, you realize the impact they’re having in a whole different way,” said Foudy, whose son is 10 and daughter 12. “You don’t see it as players, I don’t think. As a mom, I see it in a very different sense.”

Even the gender discrimination lawsuit filed against U.S. Soccer by the current team has its roots in the '99ers. They, too, battled the federation, and FIFA, to try to address the inequities between the men’s and women’s games. Their brief strike in early 2000 brought about the team’s first collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer.

Money was a sticking point, of course. But the '99ers wanted to leave the game in better hands for the next generation, just as the current players do.

“I love the courage that they’ve shown, and I love the fact that they’re not taking no for an answer,” Hamm said. “They’re not just fighting for each other out there, they’re fighting for the young girls in the stands. A lot of us have daughters, and it’s not just about the game of soccer. It’s about how we view and value women and young girls in this country.”

Not only in this country.

The '99ers were the first generation to benefit from Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation that prohibited gender discrimination in education, athletics included. Other countries lacked such protections, and the trickle-down effect was apparent. 

Women’s soccer was effectively prohibited in England, France and Germany throughout much of the 20th century, bans that weren't lifted until the 1970s. Brazil prohibited women from playing almost all sports from 1941 to 1979.

Restrictions remain in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Iran allowed women to attend soccer games last year for the first time in decades.

To see the USA rally around and embrace the ‘99ers was a powerful, and empowering, symbol for women all around the world.  

“You could visually see your dream,” said Karina LeBlanc, the longtime Canadian goalkeeper who played in the first of five World Cups in 1999. “It wasn’t just you being crazy in your head, saying, `One day I want to grow up and play in a World Cup final and have a sold-out stadium and a country go crazy.’ You saw it.

“It wasn’t about the winning or losing. It was like, look at us go,” LeBlanc said. “It became an us. It wasn’t just the USA. It was look at us go, look at what we can do in this game. The way those women carried themselves were such great examples of the role models we all wanted to be.

“To this day, any time I see any of the ‘99ers, I give them a hug and tell them thank you, because it also made my dream more of a reality.”

A couple of weeks ago, Chastain was leaving the gym and stopped to hold the door open for some older women coming in. One, who Chastain guessed was in her late 60s, turned and asked why she looked so familiar.

When Chastain said she’d played soccer, the woman’s face brightened. She is originally from Chile, which will make its World Cup debut in France.

“We talked about how incredible that is because, growing up as a young woman in Chile, that would not have been possible,” Chastain said. “It was just such a nice conversation. The thought of 20 years ago, for her even to be interested in watching women’s soccer and be from a place where, for the first time ever women will have the chance to participate in the World Cup, that’s come a long way.”