Speaker 1: Little on this next check. It was the sports bra
Speaker 1: seeing round the world. Right after this happened, chaff Stain
Speaker 1: will take it. She missed a penalty kid against China
Speaker 1: and I lost that care Who can forget when Brandy
Speaker 1: chess Stain ripped off her jersey and waved it around
Speaker 1: her head in celebration after hitting the game winning goal
Speaker 1: in the Women's World Cup final against China. Male soccer
Speaker 1: players take off their shirts to celebrate goals all the time,
Speaker 1: but chas Stain's exuberance became the talk of the nation.
Speaker 1: Some found it inappropriate, others had more elaborate theories. I
Speaker 1: was amused at the time by the people saying, oh,
Speaker 1: Nike set that up. I was like, no, I don't
Speaker 1: think China would have agreed to that. And if Nike
Speaker 1: really set that up, I'm sure Brandy Chastain's sports brawl
Speaker 1: would have had a big white swissh on it. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the controversy died down, and chass stains sports braby came
Speaker 1: synonymous with women's soccer, a symbol of triumph. But back
Speaker 1: in almost fifteen years before chess Stain and the ninety
Speaker 1: nine women's team won the World Cup, the very first
Speaker 1: US women's national team. Well, they had an even bigger
Speaker 1: issue with their wardrobe. Let us play, Let us play,
Speaker 1: Let us Play, Let Us Play. Welcome to the Thread,
Speaker 1: a podcast where we unraveled the stories behind some of
Speaker 1: the most important lives and events in history to learn
Speaker 1: more about the surprising connections between them. I'm Sean Braswell.
Speaker 1: This season's Thread started with the ninety nine Ers, the
Speaker 1: U S national team whose triumph in the nine World
Speaker 1: Cup launched women's soccer into the stratosphere. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anything tops that moment still. Caitlin Murray is a
Speaker 1: journalist and author of the National Team, The Inside Story
Speaker 1: of the Women who changed Soccer. For the players who
Speaker 1: were around, who were kids at the time, they all
Speaker 1: talk about remembering World Cup. They remember that changing the
Speaker 1: idea of soccer and what they wanted to do when
Speaker 1: they grew up. But the nine ninners victory would not
Speaker 1: have been possible without another group of women, a team
Speaker 1: who also wore the team USA uniforms, even if they
Speaker 1: were a bit baggy. There wasn't a whole lot of
Speaker 1: need for a US women's national soccer team in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties. There was no Women's World Cup and
Speaker 1: the sport was not in the Olympics. Yeah, there had
Speaker 1: been paper teams of the national team from nine eight
Speaker 1: two to nineteen eighty four. These were teams where the
Speaker 1: best players in the country were picked and their names
Speaker 1: were on a sheet of paper, and that was that
Speaker 1: they didn't actually play any games. All that changed in
Speaker 1: nine five at the National Sports Festival and Baton Rouge
Speaker 1: louis an event of the U S Olympic Committee. The
Speaker 1: Sports Festival is america centerpiece of amateur athletics, and this
Speaker 1: summer it comes to Louisiana. Women's soccer was featured in
Speaker 1: this event for the first time, and it was sort
Speaker 1: of a many Olympics that they had on non Olympic
Speaker 1: years where athletes from around the country would compete against
Speaker 1: each other. Organizers announced a list of players for the
Speaker 1: women's national team after the tournament concluded. For the players
Speaker 1: whose names were read on that list, it took them
Speaker 1: by surprise. They didn't know anything about it. After the
Speaker 1: Sports Festival happened, they pulled us together and they basically said,
Speaker 1: you're not only a paper team, but we're also going
Speaker 1: to go to Italy in two weeks and we're going
Speaker 1: to go play in this moondi Alito, which then was,
Speaker 1: you know, a mini World Cup. Stacy was a member
Speaker 1: of that national team. It definitely took us all by surprise,
Speaker 1: the immediacy of it. Had a chance to go home
Speaker 1: for a few days after the festival, and then we
Speaker 1: flew to New York and we stayed out on Long
Speaker 1: Island and we trained for a week or so, and
Speaker 1: then we all hopped on a plane and flew over
Speaker 1: to Italy. The hastily assembled national team had a shoestring budget.
Speaker 1: They were given uniforms commonly called kits, but they were
Speaker 1: not women's soccer uniforms. Journalist Caitlin Murray. They didn't have
Speaker 1: names or any information that would make it seem like
Speaker 1: they were designed for the players who were about to
Speaker 1: wear them and for the women who got these kids.
Speaker 1: They really didn't look like they were designed for the
Speaker 1: team at all, and they didn't fit very well. It
Speaker 1: was apparent they were men's kids because they did not
Speaker 1: fit them at all. They were huge, They you know,
Speaker 1: came around their ankles. So the night before the team
Speaker 1: went to Italy, they were up late with their trainers.
Speaker 1: They had you know, threads and needles, and they were
Speaker 1: cutting and sewing their outfits to make sure they actually
Speaker 1: fit them properly. The players made it work. Stacy Enos again,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we looked the part like I
Speaker 1: don't know if people recognize that we were a soccer club,
Speaker 1: but you felt proud to step on it with your
Speaker 1: teammates and get on the plane and share with people
Speaker 1: that you were the U S women's national team. The
Speaker 1: team arrived in Milan, Italy, then took a five hour
Speaker 1: bus ride to a small resort town near Finnis, where
Speaker 1: the soccer tournament was to take place. Emily Pickering Hardner
Speaker 1: was also a member of that first national team. It
Speaker 1: was a beautiful beach town. The pasta was awesome, the
Speaker 1: food was great. I mean, the whole thing was incredible.
Speaker 1: We're on a beach resort. It was vacation. Bruce Spreensteen
Speaker 1: had just come out with this big album I'm Born
Speaker 1: in the USA, and everybody in Italy loved it. So
Speaker 1: when we walk out on the field, they usually played
Speaker 1: this song Born in the USA, which we would kind
Speaker 1: of look at each other out on the field and
Speaker 1: just start laughing. It was the first time that women
Speaker 1: had represented the US in an official international soccer match,
Speaker 1: and they were playing against other national teams like Italy, England,
Speaker 1: and Denmark with much more experience. Stacy Enos, it was
Speaker 1: definitely eye opening, just brilliant, high level soccer. We had
Speaker 1: to fight for every moment and every opportunity in a match,
Speaker 1: and it was definitely harder than anyone could have ever anticipated.
Speaker 1: The Americans also dealt with more than the tough competition
Speaker 1: on the field. Just getting to the field was a challenge.
Speaker 1: Before their match against England, Emily Pickering Harner, our boss
Speaker 1: got lost. We were traveling and driving in the bus
Speaker 1: for an hour and we barely got there in time
Speaker 1: for game time. I think we were flat going into it,
Speaker 1: and boom they scored, Boom they scored, and boom they scored.
Speaker 1: The team lost to England and would go on to
Speaker 1: lose three games and draw one. At the tournament, journalist
Speaker 1: Caitlin Murray, the US looked like they were playing in
Speaker 1: their first ever games, and that's how the results went.
Speaker 1: The US did not look prepared for facing the teams
Speaker 1: that they met at this tournament in Italy, but the
Speaker 1: U S team did win over many of the local
Speaker 1: Italian fans who attended Stacy. We always thought they were
Speaker 1: booing us because they were going Oosa USA. And so
Speaker 1: eventually when we stopped to look at the fans and
Speaker 1: they want your autographs and they were cheering you, they
Speaker 1: were all saying USA for USA. Going to Italy was
Speaker 1: a formative experience for the young team. I felt like
Speaker 1: we had a strong presence and we made ourselves known
Speaker 1: and uh, we learned a lot. It was invaluable. Then
Speaker 1: we we kind of knew the landscape, we knew our competition,
Speaker 1: and we knew what we had to do for the moment.
Speaker 1: There was no prospect of going to a World Cup
Speaker 1: or to the Olympics. It was just the beginning of
Speaker 1: a journey. This group of pioneers was just learning how
Speaker 1: to play together and overcome adversity. It was the start
Speaker 1: of a team culture that would endure countless challenges in
Speaker 1: the upcoming years and eventually conquer the world. If there
Speaker 1: was no glamor in US women's soccer in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: there was also certainly no money again, Caitlin Murray, the
Speaker 1: players on the early national teams were not doing it
Speaker 1: to be famous or get rich or be on TV
Speaker 1: because those things were even possibilities. Yet, the players were
Speaker 1: getting ten dollars per diem when they played in the US,
Speaker 1: they got fifteen dollars when they traveled abroad, and the
Speaker 1: first national teams received little attention from either the public
Speaker 1: or the press. You know, we look at where the
Speaker 1: team is today, the endorsement deals they get, the salaries
Speaker 1: that they make. That was not even I think a
Speaker 1: remote possibility in the players minds at the time. It
Speaker 1: was purely for the love of the game, purely to
Speaker 1: represent the country. The lack of compensation and resources only
Speaker 1: further motivated the players. Tim Nash is the author of
Speaker 1: It's Not the Glory and has covered the women's national
Speaker 1: team for decades. What really helped the team develop and
Speaker 1: become what they are is the attitude that, well, we're
Speaker 1: not getting any money, so how do we go out
Speaker 1: and win? So they would do whatever they could. They
Speaker 1: would get very creative. Take for instance, midfield or Michelle Acres,
Speaker 1: one of the team's best players. She sometimes worked out
Speaker 1: on racquetball courts. She didn't need anybody to pass the
Speaker 1: ball to or shoot at when she had four walls
Speaker 1: around her, so she'd just going there and bash them
Speaker 1: off the wall and work on striking the ball and
Speaker 1: work on receiving the ball all at once. The players
Speaker 1: were largely responsible for maintaining their own fitness during the
Speaker 1: long periods of time in which there were no games.
Speaker 1: Stacy Enos, I had already graduated, so I needed to
Speaker 1: jump in any scrimmage game or any pickup game I
Speaker 1: could find. I used the weight room a lot and
Speaker 1: just ran on my own. So it was a lot
Speaker 1: of just self discipline. Basically, the discipline extended into all
Speaker 1: parts of their lives, including what jobs the players could take.
Speaker 1: Caitlin Murray, and you have a player like Karen Jennings,
Speaker 1: she was the best player on the team at the time.
Speaker 1: She also was working in a marketing job, and she
Speaker 1: had to keep quitting her jobs so she could keep
Speaker 1: playing soccer, because she would go to her employer and say, hey,
Speaker 1: can I have a couple of weeks off to go
Speaker 1: to camp with the national team and train, And of
Speaker 1: course the employer was like, no, you can't just keep
Speaker 1: leaving your job to go play soccer. So she would
Speaker 1: quit the job that she had compete with the national team,
Speaker 1: and then I have to get a new job. And
Speaker 1: she did that multiple times to the point where it
Speaker 1: was a running joke within the team, like, oh, Karen
Speaker 1: quit another job today, And there was certainly no career
Speaker 1: to be had in playing soccer, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: you're paying dividends towards something that's going to materialize. Lauren
Speaker 1: Gregg was the assistant coach of the nine that we
Speaker 1: heard from an episode one. She was also a player
Speaker 1: on the early women's national teams. There was no promise
Speaker 1: of anything more than what was right in front of you,
Speaker 1: which was very little from the outside, but for those
Speaker 1: of us in it, it was everything. Greg slept on
Speaker 1: the floor if someone else's apartment so she didn't have
Speaker 1: to pay rent. It was very difficult to have, you know,
Speaker 1: full time job and train at the level you needed
Speaker 1: to and then be able to up and leave um
Speaker 1: for you know, a couple of weeks at a time,
Speaker 1: and people weren't so forgiving as they are now because
Speaker 1: it's so popular now. Back then, it was like we
Speaker 1: were doing all this in an abyss. Early on, the
Speaker 1: team only played about five to eight games a year.
Speaker 1: When they traveled for tournaments, their trip expenses were paid,
Speaker 1: but it was not exactly luxury travel. The players tease
Speaker 1: today about wanting to have you know, like a jet service,
Speaker 1: you know, and not fly commercial, and we're like, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Like back then, it was like from
Speaker 1: row thirty back was smoking, and you know, twenty nine
Speaker 1: above was non smoking, and so obviously the entire plane was,
Speaker 1: you know, a smoking plane or you know, so we'd
Speaker 1: just literally be like covering ourselves in blankets. The team
Speaker 1: wrote on low flying propeller planes in China. They played
Speaker 1: on dirt fields in Sardinia, Tim Nash. They rode on
Speaker 1: a coal train through Bulgaria. Their faces were just black
Speaker 1: with coal set. The restroom was a hole in the floor.
Speaker 1: At one hotel they stayed in Haiti, they got one
Speaker 1: hour each day of running water and electricity, so they
Speaker 1: would be jumping in and out of shower trying to
Speaker 1: get and then the ones who couldn't do that just
Speaker 1: bathed in the pool. And I said it was pretty
Speaker 1: nasty by the time they left. But in such environments
Speaker 1: the team really had time to get to know one another.
Speaker 1: They did not complain about how they were treated. They
Speaker 1: just worked harder. Again, Lauren greg we never felt deprived,
Speaker 1: and I felt very lucky to have the opportunity. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we grew tremendously from that, and that foundation of
Speaker 1: training when no one's watching became sort of the foundation
Speaker 1: for the success I think of the team over the
Speaker 1: next decade. The drive and the resilience of this group
Speaker 1: of women would shape a national team that has won
Speaker 1: gold medals in four Olympics and three World Cup Championships.
Speaker 1: Here's how three national team players express what those early
Speaker 1: days meant to them. You look back and you think,
Speaker 1: to me, is some of the happiest days of my life.
Speaker 1: Still to this day cry at the national anthem because
Speaker 1: I was the best of the best of the best,
Speaker 1: you know it was. It's a cool feeling. There's also, um,
Speaker 1: just a great sense of pride that knowing that we
Speaker 1: were one of the foundations and one of the building
Speaker 1: blocks were the start of the history of the women's
Speaker 1: national team. I'm proud to be on the team. It
Speaker 1: opened doors and um yeah, I carry it. I carry
Speaker 1: it with a full heart. It was no accident that
Speaker 1: the team players got the chance to be pioneers and
Speaker 1: women's soccer. They were part of a generation of women
Speaker 1: that played on the front lines of history. Thanks to
Speaker 1: a controversial new law that's up next. Things really started
Speaker 1: to change for women's sports in nineteen seventy two. That's
Speaker 1: when Title nine, a law banning sex discrimination and federally
Speaker 1: funded education programs, was passed by Congress and signed into
Speaker 1: law by President Richard Nixon. Nixon signed the bill on
Speaker 1: June twenty, nineteen seventy two. It did not get a
Speaker 1: lot of attention. Six days earlier, something even more momentous
Speaker 1: happened in the news. What do you think we have
Speaker 1: a mystery story out of Washington. Five people have been
Speaker 1: arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of the
Speaker 1: Democrat a National Committee in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: The Democratic National Committee is located in the Watergate Office building.
Speaker 1: For the next two years, while President Nixon and the
Speaker 1: American public were distracted by the Watergate scandal, Title nine
Speaker 1: was slowly remaking the sports landscape. The law meant that
Speaker 1: young women everywhere, at least in theory, had access to
Speaker 1: competitive sports. Sports programs for girls exploded in the decades
Speaker 1: that followed. In nineteen seventy four, for example, there were
Speaker 1: only about one hundred thousand girls across the country that
Speaker 1: were registered with the US Youth Soccer Association. Now that
Speaker 1: number is in the millions. The women of those first
Speaker 1: national soccer teams were among the earliest beneficiaries of Title nine.
Speaker 1: Karen Blumenthal's a journalist and author of Let Me Play,
Speaker 1: The Story of Title nine, The Law that changed the
Speaker 1: future of girls in America. The women athletes of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies were sometimes called Title nine babies. For girls
Speaker 1: born in the nineteen seventies, the opportunities were vastly different
Speaker 1: than for girls born before that. There were sports teams
Speaker 1: from an early age, and so there were soccer leagues
Speaker 1: and soccer teams for three year old girls, just like
Speaker 1: there were for three year old boys. There were gymnastics
Speaker 1: opportunities for younger kids. There were um volleyball teams in
Speaker 1: elementary school. National team player Emily Pickering Harner again. As
Speaker 1: a girl growing up in the seventies, sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: I was involved in all kinds of sports and wanted
Speaker 1: to play them all. And as soon as I was
Speaker 1: allowed to play Little League baseball due to Title nine,
Speaker 1: I played Little League baseball and so Title nine was
Speaker 1: big and huge for me. I knew about it at
Speaker 1: a very early age, but it was still hard to
Speaker 1: be a female athlete. In my high school, we did
Speaker 1: not have girls soccer. Three of us decided to try
Speaker 1: out for the boys team. Well, they put an obstacle
Speaker 1: in our way that we were required to ron do
Speaker 1: sit ups, do push ups, and things like that. Suffice
Speaker 1: it to say none of us be prepared for it
Speaker 1: past the test, so we didn't get to play on
Speaker 1: the boys team. Stacy Enos had a similar experience. Sophomore
Speaker 1: year of high school. We finally got um a girls
Speaker 1: soccer team. There was a point where my family had
Speaker 1: considered moving or I was maybe going to go live
Speaker 1: with an aunt and uncle, just in order to play
Speaker 1: high school soccer. Even with Title nine in effect, it
Speaker 1: took many colleges even longer to get with the program.
Speaker 1: Soccer analyst Jin Cooper, we all know Title nine passed
Speaker 1: in nineteen two, but it's not like a light switch
Speaker 1: was flipped on and suddenly everybody's playing collegiate sports. You know,
Speaker 1: it took a while for conferences to get organized, schools,
Speaker 1: to get organized facilities, recruiting all that stuff. It's like
Speaker 1: slowly taking hold. If US colleges wanted to offer scholarships
Speaker 1: to male athletes, they had to offer them to women
Speaker 1: now as well, Susan Ware as a historian and author
Speaker 1: of Game, Set and Match, Billy Jane King and the
Speaker 1: Revolue in women's sports. And then as more and more
Speaker 1: women are getting these athletic scholarships, it increases the talent pool,
Speaker 1: it increases the depth and skill of the teams that
Speaker 1: they're being recruited on. And then you really see that
Speaker 1: playing out over the next couple of decades, so you
Speaker 1: begin to see how these scholarships are so important in
Speaker 1: the athletic training of our future heroes. And those heroes
Speaker 1: include the women who played on the first national soccer
Speaker 1: teams Caitlin Murray. The national team was kind of built
Speaker 1: on Title nine because so many of those players who
Speaker 1: went on to have long, important careers with the national
Speaker 1: team were identified in college as college players. So you
Speaker 1: have to think, if there's no Title nine, if none
Speaker 1: of these women are competing in college, who was going
Speaker 1: to be on the national team. Some of these women
Speaker 1: found themselves for repeatedly at ground zero for a changing
Speaker 1: sports world. Stacy Enos I consider myself a pioneer by
Speaker 1: all standards. I mean, I've definitely have been on a
Speaker 1: lot of first you know, I've been on my first
Speaker 1: high school team, the college's first and C double a team,
Speaker 1: and then also had the opportunity to be on the
Speaker 1: first US women's national team. The women on that first
Speaker 1: national team were true pioneers. But there was another earlier
Speaker 1: team that really moved things forward, one in an entirely
Speaker 1: different sport, A group of women who are not just pioneers,
Speaker 1: they were revolutionaries. They were members of the Yale women's
Speaker 1: crew team. They get on an unheeded bus, they drive
Speaker 1: thirty minutes to the Hausa Tonic. They'd compete, and they'd
Speaker 1: train in the wind and the rain and the snow,
Speaker 1: and then they had to wait on an unheeded bus
Speaker 1: while every last Yale member of the men's rowing team
Speaker 1: would shower. I mean, we're at Yale Universe City. We
Speaker 1: are incredibly bright women, and if we were to say
Speaker 1: it's okay for us to be treated this way, what
Speaker 1: kind of message would that be for us to send
Speaker 1: out into the universe. And so the women decided to
Speaker 1: make a statement. We needed to speak our truth and
Speaker 1: and we wanted our voice to be heard. And I
Speaker 1: can imagine that in other athletic departments athletic directors all
Speaker 1: of a sudden said, oh my god, did you hear
Speaker 1: what those those women at Yale did? And maybe they
Speaker 1: started to think could that happen here? In the next
Speaker 1: episode of The Thread, the story of the Yale nine Team,
Speaker 1: a group of women who paved the way for the
Speaker 1: women's national soccer teams and whose bold active defiance since
Speaker 1: shock waves through college campuses across the nation and changed
Speaker 1: what it meant to be a female athlete in America.
Speaker 1: Let Us, let us Right. The Thread is produced by
Speaker 1: Robert Coulos, Shannon Williamson, and me Sean Braswell. Evan Roberts
Speaker 1: engineered our show. This episode features the song let us Play,
Speaker 1: written and performed by teacup Gin. You can hear more
Speaker 1: of their songs at teacup gin dot com. To learn
Speaker 1: more about The Thread, visit Aussie dot com, slash the
Speaker 1: Threat all one word, and make sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: The Thread on Apple Podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: or listen wherever you get your podcast