Professional Women’s Soccer in the Land: A Letter to the NWSL

Bringing an NWSL team to Cleveland would mean everything. I was born and raised in Cleveland to a sports obsessed family with three brothers. My siblings and I were all multi-sport athletes, but as the only girl in the family, I rarely got the chance to see my hopes and dreams reflected back to me.

Women’s sports didn’t (and still don’t) get the same attention and investment as men’s sports. My brothers not only had the ability to watch male athletes on TV 24/7, they could play as them in video games, they could readily purchase jerseys with their favorite players’ names on the back, they could see them play in stadiums in front of tens of thousands on a regular basis, and crucially, the stories of these athletes (both on and off the field) were spread far and wide.

As a female athlete and sports fan, I didn’t get the opportunity to dream as big as my male counterparts, and I never got the opportunity to connect to a professional women’s sports team in Cleveland the same way as a men’s team. We need to build and support more women’s sports franchises, so people like me can finally experience their city’s (and family members’) generational adoration of a women’s team. I mean, if a city will throw their unceasing support behind a dreadfully uninspiring Cleveland Browns team for decades, I think this city can get behind one of the fast growing and most exciting sports in the world in women’s soccer. Over the past year, the NWSL broke attendance and TV viewership records, and across the pond, several European women’s soccer matches drew crowds of 90,000. The tides are changing, and just thinking about it gives me goosebumps!

To me, Cleveland needs to be a part of this change. The last time this city had a major women’s sports team was the Cleveland Rockers, but I was only seven years old by the time the WNBA franchise folded and never had the chance to fully appreciate them. I’m 26 years old today, and I’ve still never had a magical experience with women’s pro sports in my city—a city that loves sports more than just about anything.

I can confidently attest to the transformational (and just downright exciting) power of women’s soccer in America. I may not have very many memories associated with women’s sports on TV, but I remember exactly where I was when Abby Wambach scored an unbelievable header goal against Brazil in the dying seconds of the 2011 Women’s World Cup quarterfinals (and my brothers do, too). That moment cemented my love of women’s soccer in this country and my belief that everyone could fall in love with it if we just invested resources in it.

Since then, my hunger for women’s soccer still lives on. Though Ohio does not have an NWSL franchise, I’ve chosen to support the Portland Thorns instead, in part due to their raucous supporters’ group whose chants are always so passionate and loud that you can hear them on the TV broadcasts. This is what I want for Cleveland. Just a few weeks ago, I witnessed an NWSL moment that felt nearly as earth-shattering as Abby Wambach’s famous goal at the World Cup, and in that moment, the sky-high possibilities of this league flashed before my eyes. On October 23, 2022, two of the best teams in the league, the Portland Thorns and San Diego Wave, squared off in the NWSL semifinals with 22,000 fans watching on at Providence Park in Portland. It was a back-and-forth, edge-of-your-seat match that looked primed for extra time, but a breakthrough was coming—one so sweet that a screenwriter couldn’t have written it any better. Crystal Dunn, star player for the USWNT who had just given birth five months before, scored a golazo from the edge of the box in the 93rd minute following a corner kick, and the whole place erupted.

As other USWNT fans will know, it was even sweeter given the fact that Dunn was given the chance to play her favored midfield position in this game, a role she’s been denied on the national team for years, which made the goal feel like a bold statement to the coaches that doubted her (this is also the kind of storytelling that should exist for women’s sports, but I digress.) That goal was exactly how I felt after Abby Wambach did the impossible against Brazil, and it was exactly how I felt after Cleveland brought home its first major sports title in 52 years.

People need to have more of these experiences with women’s sports teams. Not just because it’s important and inspiring for women to dream bigger and achieve parity with men, but because women’s professional sports leagues are electrifying entertainment that creates lifelong memories and bonds with other people.

I hope an NWSL team not only comes to Cleveland, but receives the investment it deserves. I want this team to experience a championship parade akin to the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers, with strangers hugging and dancing in the street and people climbing to the top of parking garages just to get a glimpse of the players that make them so indescribably happy and proud. I sincerely hope to have the chance to support an NWSL team in Cleveland and help the franchise grow to its full potential, which in my mind, is astronomical.

See you in the stands!