ABSTRACT
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. Summer, 2001. I am here to take in a Women’s United Soccer Association (W*USA) game between the Washington Freedom and the Carolina Courage. Eating lunch before the game at a café near “23,” Michael Jordan’s theme restaurant located near Franklin Street on the University of North Carolina campus, the sight before me is, at first glance, encouraging: young girls with their parents, most wearing Courage T-shirts or caps, anxiously await their chance to see Mia Hamm play in person; a group of college-aged women, all sporting Team USA soccer jerseys bearing the names “Hamm,” “Chastain,” or “Overbeck,” boisterously discuss the merits of women’s pro sports; and an elderly couple, wearing sweatshirts that read “Soccer Grandma” and “Soccer Grandpa,” each enjoy ice cream cones before the game. The atmosphere is festive and refreshing; women’s professional soccer, like its basketball counterpart – the WNBA – appears to have found a home within the popular imaginary of Middle America.
