There is a particular feeling that comes from watching something you helped plant grow taller than you ever imagined. When I sit down to watch women’s soccer now, I am not only watching a match. I am watching decades of early mornings, borrowed fields, and stubborn belief show up in a single frame, and it still catches me off guard.
When my generation played, the idea that a young girl might grow up with posters of women footballers on her wall felt like a pleasant fantasy. We played because we loved it, and because we were told, in a hundred quiet ways, that love was supposed to be enough. It never was, but it was what we had, so we built from there.
What strikes me most today is the ordinariness of it all. Kids arrive at training in jerseys with women’s names on the back, and nobody blinks. Broadcasts treat the sport as a serious product rather than a charitable curiosity. That kind of normal is the real victory, because normal is what lasts when the headlines move on.
I don’t want to romanticize the past, though. Plenty of what we endured was simply unfair, and nobody should wish it on the next group. The point of building something is not to prove that you can suffer through it. The point is to hand the next player a better starting line than the one you were given.
There is still work to do, and I say that without bitterness. Investment needs to be steady rather than seasonal. Coaching pathways need to open for women who want them. Players deserve to be treated as professionals in every corner of the sport, from facilities to travel to the quiet details nobody photographs.
But I also think we are allowed to enjoy this. Pioneers sometimes carry a habit of staying braced for the next fight, and it can crowd out the joy of the moment. Watching a young player take a risk on the ball, with no sense that she is carrying a movement, is its own kind of reward.
So here is my small request to everyone who loves this game. Show up, be loud, and be generous with the people who came before. The soaring you see now was lifted by thousands of hands, most of them unnamed. Let’s keep lifting, and let’s keep looking up while we do it.
