2004 Olympics: Soccer

11:32 PM CDT on Thursday, August 26, 2004

ATHENS, Greece – In the 60th minute Thursday night at Karaiskaki Stadium, 36-year-old Brandi Chastain ran off the field to the sideline. She spent a few seconds there exchanging words and a hug with her replacement, 22-year-old Cat Reddick.

That Chastain grew up to be one of the most famous women soccer players in the world was due, for the most part, to her own desire.

That Reddick grew up to be Chastain's replacement on the world's most famous women's soccer team was due, for the most part, to Reddick's desire to emulate what she saw Chastain, Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy and their sisters do in the '90s: win World Cups, Olympic gold medals and everything in between.

"Brandi's an incredible player," Reddick said. "It's an honor to get a hug and encouragement from her. 'You can do it,' that's what she said."

And Reddick did. She became an Olympic champion Thursday night.

Chastain, Hamm and Foudy have been telling younger women they can do whatever they want for years now, but mostly through their actions.

As it turned out, you see, with the flames flickering out for the women who produced all that metal, setting the standard for women's soccer wasn't the most notable thing they accomplished. Instead, it was creating an opportunity where there had been none.

"These women began when it was nearly nothing," said U.S. International Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz after draping gold medals around the champions' necks.

For that reason, U.S. women's soccer did not deflate at the Athens Games, which was almost certainly the last time Chastain, Hamm, Foudy, Kristine Lilly and Joy Fawcett, all members of the '91 World Cup-winning team, will play this game. The same can be said of keeper Briana Scurry. They are thirtysomethings now. This is a young woman's game. Hamm, perhaps the best and most famous women's player ever, wants to start a family with her baseball star husband, Nomar Garciaparra.

Instead, what U.S. women's soccer did Thursday night was start a new chapter. The charges of soccer moms in the '90s, who grew up with posters of Chastain, Hamm and the others on their bedroom walls, are now the new charges of the U.S. national team.

Indeed, the first goal Thursday night was made by 20-year-old Lindsay Tarpley. She was one of two key youngsters who started. The other was 24-year-old Abby Wambach, who made the winning goal in the second period of extra time to beat Brazil, 2-1. Appropriately, it came off a corner kick from Lilly. It was a passing of the torch, you could say.

And ready in reserve were 23-year-old Heather Mitts and 19-year-old Heather O'Reilly. O'Reilly made the winning overtime goal against Germany in the semifinal to give the women she grew up idolizing one last chance at Olympic gold.

The first women to receive their gold medals were Foudy, Fawcett and Hamm. The last was Cindy Parlow, just 26.

"It's everything you can imagine," Reddick said of the thrill of winning Olympic gold. "I never had anything like this around my neck before."

What girls inherited from the women of U.S. soccer hasn't been limited to this country, either. These Olympics stand as further testament to seeds of opportunity they planted.

There are more women participating in the Athens Games than any Olympics before. There are more new sports – women's wrestling and women's water polo. That followed the debut of women's weightlifting in Sydney. Women's soccer broke out with rousing success in Atlanta. There will certainly be a new one at the Beijing Games in 2008.

"They are all team sports," said DeFrantz, a black woman who missed her chance to participate in the 1980 Summer Games after the United States boycotted. "It's so important for women to have a sense of team ... the recognition that you are not alone."

Now there are women playing those sports around the globe, not to mention women who are finally popping up on teams in Muslim countries for the first time.

Maybe it all would've happened some other day, but that it happened now is due largely to what the grand dames of U.S. women's soccer did. It is what Title IX provided, too.

They pioneered. They took the chance. On the heels of their '99 World Cup title, they helped launch the women's pro league. It failed quickly.

But that didn't dampen their spirits of those who would follow them. What a run, from world champions 13 years ago back to Olympic champions.

"They get it, those younger players just get it," Hamm said after laboring 120 minutes in her finale. "For a long time, us older players were a little nervous that when you leave, that they ... understand it's an honor to be on this team, it's not a right. They understand that and embrace it."

U.S. women's soccer is still in good hands, or, more accurately, on solid footing.

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