Watching Sophia Smith dominate in the Women’s World Cup is like seeing a unicorn prancing through your backyard: What’s she doing there?
Sophia’s from Windsor. It wasn’t that long ago that she was appearing daily at Fossil Ridge High School. If you timed it right, and if she liked doughnuts, you might have stood in line behind her at Mr. Yo’s Donut, on Main Street in Windsor.
I’ll have what she’s having: The international awesomeness doughnut, and a World Cup of coffee.
In her World Cup debut, Sophia smoked in a goal at the 14-minute mark, and a little later, bounced one through the legs of Vietnam’s goalie. In the second half, she threaded a sweet assist to fellow Coloradan Lindsey Horan, who rammed the ball home. In game two, against a much tougher Dutch team, Horan got royally pissed off about rough play, and then retaliated with a vicious header to tie the game.
That’s the Colorado connection, baby!
We live in the epicenter of female football greatness! Maybe it is the doughnuts?
Our next-door stars are only the most recent ballers who have been making the U.S. great on the soccer pitch. It began in the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991, as Colorado’s own April Heinrichs formed part of the famed “Triple-edged Sword” that cut down Norway in the final. Then in 1999, Brandi Chastain bulls-eyed a championship-game penalty kick and ripped off her jersey in an iconic celebration.
It was the sports bra of doom for China!
And who can forget Alex Morgan’s viral tea-sipping gesture, as the U.S. eliminated our colonial oppressor Great Britain on the way to the 2019 Cup?
This year, Smith, Horan, Morgan and the technicolor beast Megan Rapinoe seek an unprecedented third championship in a row. No World Cup team, of either sex, has ever pulled off that particular hat trick.
No pressure, ladies.
But as hard as the U.S. women fight on the field, they’ve had to fight that hard off of it. Through years of protest, lawsuits, and negotiation, they have finally achieved pay equity with the U.S. men’s team. But even if they win the World Cup this year, their bonus pool will be just $10.5 million dollars. When the men reached the knockout round last year in Qatar, they received $13 million dollars—for their 16th place participation trophy.
Thirteen mil doesn’t buy what it used to, evidently.
But in women’s soccer, compensation may be the least troubling problem. For one example among many, the male leaders of soccer federations in Afghanistan and Haiti have been accused of sexually abusing female players.
It makes a cheer stick in your throat.
OK, it’s a drag to rattle on about money, sex abuse, and discrimination, when there’s such beautiful soccer unfolding Down Under. But cheering for the women’s game means cheering for the players off the pitch as well.
Think of the team from Jamaica. The Reggae Girlz, as they’re known, disbanded in 2016 because of a lack of funding. Then Bob Marley’s daughter Cedella rallied support, and the team went on to qualify for the World Cup. A few days ago, the Reggae Girlz famously stuffed France for a 0-0 tie.
Redemption song, indeed.
Rapinoe has said that the U.S. women’s team should “represent America…and a sense of patriotism…that kind of flips that term on its head.”
In soccer, that head-flip maneuver is called a bicycle kick. And if you can pull it off, it astonishes an opponent. For our women’s team, and for the amazing athletes they’ll face off against, that’s the goal.
And there’s our neighbor Sophia Smith, kicking it for Northern Colorado.
Go get ‘em, you Fossil Ridge SaberCat!
Pumped to watch the games? Here are a few places holding watch parties in Denver and Fort Collins.
Peter Moore is a writer and illustrator living in Fort Collins, and a cultural commentator for KUNC. Find his work at KUNC.org.
