Women's soccer tries to regain buzz

Twelve years on, the soccer part is as vigorous as during the intoxicating summer of 1999 for the U.S. women's team. The Americans enter the three-week 2011 Women's World Cup tournament, spread among nine cities in Germany through July 17, ranked No. 1 on Earth and no worse than championship co-favorites with Germany and Brazil.

But the team's most experienced player, Christie Rampone, clearly has seen better times for her sport in terms of spectator attention and general visibility.

"My experience, yeah, I started off, like, big-time," she said. "My first experience was those huge crowds, playing with that pioneering group that built the women's game."

She is the only active player left from '99, when crowds routinely in excess of 50,000 -- and up to 90,000 for the final -- filled stadiums across America and made household names of Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain. That team spawned the so-called "pony-tailed hooligans" -- waves of young female fans -- and found its way onto the cover of Time, Newsweek and People.

Yet it did not unlock the secret of sustained fan interest. What appeared a paradigm shift in the marketability of women's team sports did not endure, even though this current team -- captained by Rampone from her position on defense -- has carried on the legacy of excellence established by the 99ers, losing only four of its last 73 games over 31/2 years.

What has kept Rampone around -- through the birth of two children, gall bladder and knee surgery and a failed women's professional league, "is just the love of the game," she said. "I was just never ready to give it up." She turned 36 Friday and can't expect to see, in her fourth and last World Cup, the scale of the 1999 fuss again. (Her last international competition, she said, will be the 2012 London Olympics.)

Among the promising spinoffs from '99 was the Women's United Soccer Association, a fully professional league started in 2001, with Rampone -- she was single then and known as Christie Pearce -- one of the WUSA's "founding players" and a member of the Mitchel Athletic Complex-based New York Power. Unable to sustain sufficient corporate sponsorship or hold average attendance much above 6,500, the league folded after three years and the WPS -- Women's Professional Soccer -- took four years to organize and another two to begin playing games.

Now in its second year and barely a blip on the sports world's radar, WPS' record crowd to date -- realized just last month in suburban Atlanta -- was a mere 6,125.

"I've definitely experienced what can be," Rampone said. "Knowing that the talent's there, that's the frustrating part. In the league, the level [of talent] is there, but just getting the people out, the hardest part is showing America that soccer is a good spectator sport."

Members of the national team -- all but one of them also plays for WPS teams and therefore are under contract both to U.S. Soccer and the league -- can make a living at soccer, some earning into six figures. "But it's about getting the sponsors, the excitement and the buzz," said Rampone, whose club team is the Boca Raton-based magicJack.

She hardly expects the 90,125 who watched the 1999 World Cup title game at the Rose Bowl. "Not that," she said. "But it would be nice to fill our [WPS stadiums, some of them seating fewer than 5,000]. We're not asking for big numbers. Just something like, say, five [thousand], then maybe seven, then 10. And not keep hitting dead ends."

The women's national team, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati said, is "absolutely" the crown jewel among the federation's various age-group programs, male and female. "We spend more time and effort and resources on our women's team than, I think, anyone in the world," he said, "and we'll continue to double-down, support the national team and the women's league.

"But it's not easy. Women's teams in general don't have a great history on the spectator level in the United States. We'd had some success with this team but it's not just success and resources that make instant attendance."

In the meantime, in Germany's modest-size stadiums these next few weeks, the national team would find significant consolation in another World Cup championship trophy.