www abdopublishing com Published by Abdo Publishing a division of ABDO PO Box 398166 Minneapolis Minnesota 55439 Copyright 2015 by Abdo Consulting Group Inc International copyrights reserved in all countries No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher SportsZone is a trademark and logo of Abdo Publishing Printed in the United States of America North Mankato Minnesota 092014 012015 Cover Photo Lacy Atkins The San Francisco Examiner AP Images Interior Photos Lacy Atkins The San Francisco Examiner AP Images 1 Duomo Corbis 4 Diether Endlicher AP Images 7 Press Association AP Images 9 Gilbert Iundt TempSport Corbis 10 Ron Frehm AP Images 15 Philippe Caron Sygma Corbis 16 Paul Sakuma AP Images 21 Bill Kostroun AP Images 22 George Tiedemann Corbis 24 Greg Gibson AP Images 26 John Todd isiphotos com Corbis 29 Nick Ut AP Images 30 Mark J Terrill AP Images 33 37 Eric Risberg AP Images 34 Michael Caulfield AP Images 39 Marcio Jose Sanchez AP Images 43 Editor Chrös McDougall Series Designer Craig Hinton Library of Congress Control Number 2014944248 Cataloging-in-Publication Data Trusdell Brian US women win the World Cup Brian Trusdell p cm Greatest events in sports history ISBN 978-1-62403-599-9 lib bdg Includes bibliographical references and index 1 Soccer United States History Juvenile literature 2 Soccer players United States Juvenile literature 3 Women soccer players United States Juvenile literature 4 World Cup Soccer Juvenile literature I Title 796 334 dc23 2014944248
CONTENTS ONE Getting Noticed 5 TWO Making the Team 11 THREE Creating an Event 17 FOUR Big from the Start 23 FIVE The Final 31 SIX The Legacy 39 Timeline 44 Glossary 45 For More Information 46 Index 48 About the Author 48
5 CHAPTER Getting Noticed US star Mia Hamm controls the ball during the 1996 Olympic Games 1 The US women’s soccer team went to the first Women’s World Cup in 1991 and won Yet in 1995 the team’s average home crowd was just 4,392 Some high school football games draw more people than that The players were used to playing outside of the spotlight Then in 1996 that changed The 1996 Olympic Games were held in Atlanta Georgia Women’s soccer was an Olympic sport for the first time And on August 1 of that year 76,481 fans packed Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia in Athens It was the sport’s first gold medal game The crowd helped cheer the US women to a 2 1 victory over China
