Technically, it will be just another game. Opening night, true, but still just one of 22 on the regular-season schedule.
Emotionally? Friday night’s debut of Angel City FC at Banc of California Stadium will be off the charts, for the athletes, coaches and staff involved and especially for those who campaigned hard for the return of professional women’s soccer to the country’s second-largest market.
Hopefully, in the ceremony leading up to ACFC’s official National Women’s Soccer League season opener against the two-time champion North Carolina Courage, there will be a prominent place for members of Rebellion 99, one of the team’s six supporters’ groups, and particularly for Lindsay Rojas.
She was the one who brought the banner reading “NWSL to L.A.,” to the 3252 supporters section at an LAFC game in June, 2019. It subsequently appeared at U.S. Women’s National Team matches, MLS games, lower division and college games, on T-shirts and flags and on the web. It became an organized movement that summer, and a year later it bore fruit when the NWSL granted Los Angeles a franchise.
And yes, Rojas said in a phone interview, she does feel a bit of ownership in the process that got it done.
“Shortly before Angel City was even announced, (co-founder and club president) Julie Uhrman got on a Zoom call with my husband Mark and myself to basically tell us that all of our hard work made it happen,” she said. “I know when we started our petition to bring the NWSL to L.A., (eventual Angel City co-owners) Natalie Portman and Alexis Ohanian were sharing it on their social media, and they were advocating for it as well. So I know that a lot of them had been paying attention to all the banners everywhere we’ve been and all the support that we received.
“So yeah, it does feel like we are kind of part founders of the club in a way.”
There’s not much room left in the owners’ suite, of course. The ownership group that launched this franchise – which began with entrepreneur Uhrman, actor Portman and venture capitalist Kara Nortman – has grown to nearly 100 individuals. It possesses not only the star power you’d expect on the doorstep to Hollywood but the gravitas represented by the pioneers of the sport’s success in this country, former Women’s World Cup champions such as Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, and Shannon Boxx.
It has already set itself apart in the most diverse and competitive sports market in North America, with the heft of its ownership group, its commitment to diversity and social justice and the intensity of interest that has translated into more than 15,000 season tickets sold (and probably a sizable amount of merchandise) before they’ve played a home game.
We pause here for a reminder: This is an expansion team, and it might take a while for the on-field results to catch up to the enthusiasm. ACFC won one, tied one and lost four in the preseason Challenge Cup tournament, basically using it for “getting our squad and our house in order,” as Coach Freya Coombe said in February. They tied fellow expansionist San Diego in the first match and beat the Portland Thorns, 1-0, on a goal by Christen Press last Sunday, playing their tournament home games at 10,000-seat Titan Stadium on Cal State Fullerton’s campus.
The first one against San Diego, on March 19, should have been a clue. Officially, attendance was 6,307, but the actual crowd was said to be at least 9,000 amid reports that the line to get in wound around the stadium at kickoff and ticket-takers finally gave up and stopped scanning tickets.
And there was this:
“One of the first comments after the very first game in Fullerton was that the players couldn’t hear each other in the warmup, let alone the game when the crowd was actually in the stadium,” Coombe said Wednesday during a virtual media briefing.
Imagine what it will be like Friday night. And fans will have plenty of time to prepare for the 7:30 kickoff, with a fan fest in the Christmas Tree Lane area just north of the stadium beginning at 3:30 and an in-stadium pre-game show at 6:30.
Press, an L.A. native who grew up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, was part of two CIF Southern Section championship teams at Chadwick, became Stanford’s all-time leading scorer, has won two Women’s World Cup titles with the national team and has played 11 professional seasons for clubs both domestically and overseas.
She understands what’s different about this team in this town: A commitment to the business potential in a women’s sport rather than a vanity project, sociological experiment or add-on to a men’s team. For instance, Uhrman said during last month’s SXSW conference that the team had cleared $35 million in sponsorship revenue before playing a game.
“Being in such an important, influential market and having the backing and support of our leadership and our investors is amazing,” Press said. “I think it absolutely gives us all a sense of purpose beyond the game.
“… When I think about our ownership group, what is most meaningful is what this group of people stands for and what they believe in. And it’s a club where I deeply believe in those same things and have shared values. And I think having the former players in the ownership group shows the belief in progress – in progress for the game, in the role that we all play as women athletes to continue to push the game forward, not just for ourselves, but for future generations.”
It’s also a testament to the idea that out of small gestures can come large achievements. Lest you scoff, fans are displaying signs in Toronto and Cincinnati similar to the one that got L.A. its team.
“The power of a banner,” Rojas said.