Monday, July 11, 2011

Ladies World Cup Soccer Note

Yesterday was a packed day for us, and first thing we did was get breakfast at our local diner. We'd planned to hike the Ice Canyon Saddle trail, and needed a full breakfast before attempting the 4.6-mile one-way hike. I've got a post about the hike coming, and again it was a little more than we could chew (but we made it)...we have a habit of doing that, picking hikes that are likely beyond our shape and fitness levels.

But at the diner, I asked the server to put on the US-Brazil game being broadcast live from Germany in this year's Women's World Cup. It was an elimination game. It was tied after the first 90+ minutes, so they went to the OT timing (two fifteen minute halves, not sudden death scoring), and we watched as Marta, the Brazilian striker and one of the best lady players in the world, score her second goal of the game, putting the US in a hole with just about twenty minutes to go. We left before seeing the end, sure the Lady Yanks has lost the game, or consigned to that anyway.

Of course we were wrong, a fact that I only learned this morning. The US women scored in the closing seconds, and then won on penalty kicks. I got a jolt when I looked at my sports page in my Press-Telegram today; there were smiling women soccer players from the US above the fold. Quickly I examined and learned.

I'd also like to note that soccer, in our little Long Beach Press-Telegram, is covered like it's a popular sport, and coverage of both the Galaxy and Chivas USA is in depth, well informed, and well intended. If the LA Times and the two New York tabloids, the Daily News and the Post, covered soccer with the same enthusiasm you see in our Press-Telegram, more people would begin to care more about it. I mention the NY tabloids because the vast majority of the people in the City don't read the NY Times, they tend to read one of the two tabloids. Where we lived in Bed-Stuy, you couldn't even buy the Times.

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