Women's pro soccer is back in Southern California — a 'transformative' moment for girls hotbed

Christen Press could hardly believe what she was seeing: Thousands of soccer fans roaring her on as she toiled for a top-tier league side in what more or less is her own backyard.
 
Women’s pro soccer returned to Southern California on Saturday night for the first time in more than a decade, and that was something Press, a U.S. national team star who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in tony Palos Verdes Estates in L.A.’s South Bay, never expected to experience.
 
Her Angel City FC side played the San Diego Wave to a 1-1 draw in the debuts of the National Women’s Soccer League’s two 2022 expansion clubs, delighting a raucous crowd of 6,307 that appeared larger — most of Cal State Fullerton’s 10,000-capacity Titan Stadium was occupied — and sounded far, far louder.
 
It was a long time coming, an oddity that speaks to some of the issues the women’s game has faced since the United States’ 1999 triumph — in front of jaw-dropping numbers of fans, culminating in 90K for the Rose Bowl title game — sparked the first of three professional leagues in this country.
 
Southern California has been the epicenter of American soccer for at least three decades now, churning out talent that populates our national teams — and those of some rivals, too — as the sport’s position in society has steadily grown into something quite important, no matter mainstream media’s cluelessness to that fact. That has never counted for much in these leagues, at least until now.
 
Now there’s Angel City, with a star-studded ownership group — more on that later — and season-ticket sales approaching 15,000, playing its Challenge Cup games in Orange County before moving into Los Angeles FC’s Banc of California Stadium in Exposition Park for the season proper. And the Wave two hours south on the 5 freeway. Things finally are right in Press’, and so many others’, world.
 
“I’ve played my entire professional career to be able to come back home and play at home,” said Press, a two-time World Cup champion who has played for WUSA’s magicJack and NWSL clubs in Chicago and Salt Lake City, in Sweden, and for Manchester United . “For the majority of my career, I didn’t think it was going to become a reality. I felt like it was a long way away before we would ever have an L.A. team.”
 
It took the NWSL 10 seasons to reach California. In 16 years of pro women’s leagues in America — with the Women’s United Soccer Association (2001-03) and Women’s Professional Soccer (2009-11) paving the NWSL’s path — there had been just one Los Angeles team, the Sol, and for only one season, promptly disappearing after reaching the first WPS championship game.
 
San Diego, which is smaller and both culturally and geographically separate from Greater Los Angeles — L.A., Orange and Ventura Counties and the most populous part of the Inland Empire — but is just as if not more passionate about soccer, had a three-year run with the WUSA’s Spirit. Nothing in the 13 years that followed.
 
Saturday night was a celebration of the drought’s demise, with a riveted audience that stood in long lines to buy scarves or jerseys with Press’ 23 on the back after lengthier queues to enter the stadium, then showered its gratitude onto those running up and down a pristine field.
 
All were abuzz about the electricity through the grounds. Wave head coach Casey Stoney, a former England national team star who had guided Manchester United’s women the past three seasons, said things got so loud that she couldn’t hear herself think and called it “one of the best atmospheres I’ve coached in.”
 
Most of the crowd was against her, of course. San Diego will make its home debut this weekend, Saturday night against the Portland Thorns at the University of San Diego’s Torero Stadium, where the Wave will play until Snapdragon Stadium — under construction on the Mission Valley site of the late, great Jack Murphy Stadium, long home to the San Diego Padres and Chargers and a regular USNT/Mexico stop — is ready to go in mid-September.
 
“The atmosphere at Angel City was incredible,” Stoney told Soccer America on Sunday. “We want to match that, Raise that, really.”
 
Both teams plan to be competitive in their first seasons and have the talent to do so, San Diego perhaps more so. The Wave, led by with former U.S. head coach Jill Ellis as president, have built a deep, quality group long on experience and headlined by U.S. stars Alex Morgan up front and Abby Dahlkemper on the backline.
 
They picked up a top goalkeeper (Kailen Sheridan, from New Jersey-based Gotham FC), built attacking depth through Swedish national-teamer Sofia Jakobsson and Jodie Taylor, a former England regular with NWSL experience, and has 10 players with U.S. youth national team experience, including three (flank attacker Amirah Ali, midfielder Kelsey Turnbow and defender Naomi Girma, the top pick in December’s NWSL draft) who made their pro debuts in the starting XI.
 
Angel City has two local stars — Press up front and New Zealand captain Ali Riley from Pacific Palisades, just north of Santa Monica, at left back — and standout midfielder Savannah McCaskill and defender Vanessa Giles, one of the keys to Canada’s Olympic gold medal last summer. Who it doesn’t have is U.S. star Julie Ertz, whose rights the club acquired in a December trade with Chicago Red Stars but remains unsigned. All appearances are that she won’t play this season, at least not in the NWSL, but head coach Freya Coombe says the lines of communication are open.