I Love Women’s Soccer, But Not The USWNT

On July 7th, the U.S. Women’s National Team, also known as the USWNT by their adoring fans, won the Women’s World Cup. They came home to a parade in New York City, appearances on late night shows, and endless sponsorship deals Thousands welcomed them and flooded social media with calls for equal pay for the women’s team. But I watched from afar and refused to join this celebration.

I spent my summer obsessed with finding the reason for why I could not cheer wholeheartedly for the team. Was it the off-putting sensation surrounding patriotism in Trump’s America that I could not separate from fans waving American flags? Was it the VAR, the controversial Virtual Assistant Referee that gave technology the power to irreversibly change games and conveniently helped the U.S. with quite a few penalty calls? Both played a role in my ambivalence towards the team, but neither completely No, the reason for my mixed feelings was something far more personal.

To be clear, I am not trying to be a killjoy. The USNWT’s wins were deserved, and it was delightful to watch young girls cheer them on. I myself used to be a die-hard fan of these players, cheering on Kelly O’Hara and Christen Press as they played at Stanford. I remember as a kid fervently watching my favorite team, the F.C. Gold Pride of the now folded Women’s Professional League, represent the Bay Area. Seeing Megan Rapinoe carry the team deeply satisfied my 7th grade self who decorated her binder with a collage of a highlighter blonde midfielder and proudly explained to my classmates who she was even though they did not recognize her.

But it was this girlhood enthusiasm that was exploited by the “pay to play” model that directs youth soccer in America in ways that I cannot forgive. At a cost of thousands of dollars, my teammates and I toured the California suburbs as part of private clubs, with the desperate hope of recruitment by college scouts. There is a reason that the most salient image of soccer in the American public imagination is that of the “soccer mom;” it takes immense amounts of generational wealth and resources to navigate soccer in this country. It is not the people’s sport, played by all kids on the street corners and empty lots of cities like it is around the world. Here, soccer is available only to the wealthy and if you’re a girl, you have one goal: to play at the college level.

Ever since the 1972 passage of the Title IX civil rights law that demanded, among other things, that equal amounts of resources be devoted to women’s sports as the men’s, women’s soccer has been inextricably tied to universities in America. As tuition has risen to precipitous levels and colleges have become more and more like businesses, this link to college admissions has made women’s soccer more cut-throat and exclusionary than ever. To even enter the realm of highly competitive women’s soccer costs thousands of dollars, not to mention extreme amounts of time and resources from one’s family for travel. Membership to one of the teams in the Elite Club National League, the most prominent league in the country, can cost upwards of $10,000 a year. After securing a spot on the team, you then must cover the cost of national tournaments that are across the country but guarantee the presence of the most sought-after college scouts. If you are lucky enough to be recruited early to a Division I or II school, you compete for a limited amount of scholarships, or you’re left to pay the cost of tuition. At a Division III school, there are no scholarships available and it is up to you to find a merit scholarship or get financial aid to make the difference.[su_pullquote align=”right”]As tuition has risen to precipitous levels and colleges have become more and more like businesses, this link to college admissions has made women’s soccer more cut-throat and exclusionary than ever.[/su_pullquote]

Where men can bypass college altogether and play in professional leagues in America or Europe if they are good enough and so desire, women must submit to the college process if they hope to continue their career.  They barely have access to precarious leagues that offer meager wages to even the most established players. Therefore, women are conditioned from a young age to fight for spots on college teams and participate in the college admissions process that in itself is increasingly becoming the purview of wealthier and wealthier families.

[su_pullquote]When we conflate access to college with the success of women’s physical skills, we cause a cycle wherein our bodies are only worth far they can take us towards institutional markers of success.[/su_pullquote]The privatization of soccer development and the connection between women’s soccer and college not only aligns the sport with the increasingly unequal economic terrain in this country but also affects young girl’s growth in detrimental ways. Ideally, sports offer children a means of exploring the limits of their body while also dealing with conflict management on the field. However, when we conflate access to college with the success of women’s physical skills, we cause a cycle wherein our bodies are only worth far they can take us towards institutional markers of success. This is an especially damaging cycle in a reality where soccer is primarily accessible to upper-class white women. In my days scratching the surface of elite soccer in California, I carried a deep shame for not being wealthy enough, blonde enough, thin enough. I hated myself for not living in a mansion in the suburbs and for not looking like the girls around me, but I thought that by playing harder I could overcome those obstacles. I was an intense, demanding teammate, often yelling at others constantly, and my body still bears the scars of broken bones and scrapes that I believed were all part of the process. On the sidelines, we would speak with a certain pride about our injuries, treating torn ACLs and concussions as medals of honor. Games were full of spats between just about everyone – between teammates, between opponents, between players and referees, between players and parents. None of this seemed out of the ordinary when we were all part of a larger system where college was the Promethean fruit available only to the precious.[su_pullquote]In my days scratching the surface of elite soccer in California, I carried a deep shame for not being wealthy enough, blonde enough, thin enough.[/su_pullquote]

All but two players on the winning roster for the USWNT are products of the college soccer pipeline. Upon the team’s return from France, article after article proclaimed their win confirmation of the excellence of women’s soccer development in America and urged a pay raise for the most successful contingent of U.S. Soccer Federation as well as increased attention for the NWSL, the National Women’s Soccer League.

What makes me most upset about the response to the U.S. win is that it marks a poverty of imagination when it comes to women’s soccer. Is equality with the men’s team, a struggling enterprise that has failed to truly compete on the world stage or represent an inclusive model of youth development, what we really want? Is higher viewership for a chronically underfunded women’s league that is completely separated from the men’s league a pathway to sustainability? Equal wages and a more popular national league will only validate a broken system wherein only the wealthiest have a chance to play if it is not joined with more radical calls to action. Instead, the Women’s World Cup can be treated as an opportunity to imagine more. In Iceland, government investment in a robust youth club league has allowed the small island nation to enjoy immense success in international tournaments. The Liga MX Femenil of Mexico has professional teams coinciding with men’s clubs that offer teams for under-17 and under-23 year olds, following in the models of European clubs that have facilitated massive improvement in their national teams through club play. Beyond insisting on the implementation of existing models of equitable youth soccer development, the USWNT could call for FIFA to recognize men’s national teams only if they show sufficient investment in their women’s programs. It is irresponsible to call for equal wages without also recognizing patterns of global inequality that predominantly affect women of color in countries in the Global South. Higher pay for 28 American women is not enough to help girls in this country or around the world.

When I think of the expectations I have for this team, I am reminded of when James Baldwin wrote in Notes on a Native Son, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” I need this team to demand more from the state of women’s soccer in this country because I am still fighting for the girl I used to be, the one who idolized this team before being crushed by the realities of the U.S. soccer system that excluded her at every turn.