It was an event, not a game

It wasn't a bandwagon that was easy to ignore.

In fact, the U.S. Women's soccer team's 1999 World Cup victories were the kind of bandwagon that nearly ran you over as it snatched you out of that easy chair and changed the way you viewed a sport that has since exploded at every level.

Like many women, I remember the 1999 World Cup most because my oldest daughter, then 5 years old, had just started playing the sport. It's not that I was daydreaming about her playing soccer at that level. (I was still trying to decide if it was a form of child abuse to take your kid to a field and let other people yell at her.)

Instead, it was the energy associated with what they did, the example they set and the way it electrified the country.

As I watched the final few soccer games — also a new experience for me — I was enthralled. As these beautiful, articulate and extremely athletic women did something incredible, it made me hope my daughter saw all of those possibilities for herself.

But make no mistake about it, the story of their success is no chick flick. Sure, we women reveled a little more because these athletes were women doing what we'd previously only watched men's teams do. But they rallied us as a country. They gave men and women, boys and girls so much to cheer about, it was hard to decide where the games ended and where the social change began.

Friday was the 10th anniversary of the 1999 World Cup win over China. While 90,000 people filled the Rose Bowl to watch the game a decade ago, nearly 40 million watched on television.

It wasn't just a game — it was an event. The Women's Professional Soccer League recently asked the five remaining players from the 1999 team who still play professional soccer to share their feelings in a video about the two-week run that ended in a shootout with China.

Even then, the players knew they were making history. Tiffeny Millbrett, who plays for FC Gold Pride with Brandi Chastain, said in the interview that they felt it was "one of the most important sporting events for our society, and not just for women's soccer and women's fans."

"The time was right," said Christine Rampone, who plays for the WPS' Sky Blue FC. "America was ready to embrace a sports team, a women's sports team."

Goalie Briana Scurry, who plays for the Washington Freedom, said in the video that she realized how big the games had become when they got stuck in traffic on the way to their first game.