THOUSAND OAKS — This is awesome! It’s about time.
This is so great! But what’s next?
That’s where we’re at with this women’s sports boom.
There’s a steady drumbeat of groundbreaking achievements: Just in the past few days, soccer star Naomi Girma agreed to move to English side Chelsea for a world-record women’s transfer fee of $1.1 million. In the WNBA, Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever announced plans to improve on their previous team-dedicated digs with a new $78 million training facility.
And Tuesday in Thousand Oaks, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Angel City Performance Center, the largest dedicated training facility in the National Women’s Soccer League.
And as the beat goes on, it’s just hammering home many things at once: Yay, progress! But, wow, have women athletes had it tough. And, dang, there’s still so much more work to do. But, yes, let’s goooo – and let’s keep it going.
It’s a lot to digest, so it’s small wonder that veteran standouts Ali Riley and Christen Press got emotional Tuesday talking about their new workplace. Or that their teammates did too this week the first time they toured their new performance center, a reimagined facility on the upper crest of California Lutheran’s campus, space the Rams occupied for eight years before their move to Woodland Hills last summer.
Matt Wade, Angel City’s assistant general manager, recounted how the big reveal elicited screams and tears when players saw their spacious new locker room, where lockers are twice the size as those they used before in temporary trailers down the hillside.
And then there’s the film room, with a projector screen and stadium seating – no more tall people in the back so everyone can see the TV.
And the massive weight room! What was fit for one professional football team is fit for another.
Sean McVay’s old office? Kids space now, where children can safely play while their moms are at work nearby.
Also: a 5,400-square-foot gym, a medical treatment and hydrotherapy area. And, where the Rams used to practice, a full soccer pitch and adjoining half field.
It’s a clever remodel, functional and stylish; from floor to ceiling it’s in keeping with the club’s distinctive asphalt-and-sol rosa color scheme. A spokesman for the team didn’t want to reveal a price tag, but the L.A. Times’ report that it was in the multimillions seems right.
And it all means so, so much to players like Riley and Press, native Angelenos who have experienced about everything in their soccer lives.
The 36-year-old Press, a two-time World Cup champion who just signed a one-year contract to stay with the club, began her pro career in Boca Raton, Florida. She played for magicJack, a club that lasted one season in the now defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league: “A lot of toxic and unprofessional things went down there; it was a ‘wow’ moment for me.”
From there she moved to Sweden, and she had a wonderful experience playing in the country’s top division, where her team shared a “dark, dingy” locker room with a boys’ team.
And then she was in Chicago, playing for the nascent NWSL’s Red Stars, on a Benedictine University’s football field in the suburbs. “You might have a coach today, your coach might not show up tomorrow, you’re playing on a college football turf for your games,” Press said. “You don’t have staff, you don’t have a GM, you don’t have a collective bargaining agreement, you don’t have an HR department. …
“All of the things that we didn’t have became a daily grind for me to try to convince often-male leadership that we needed,” said Press, who was among the U.S. Women’s National Team members who won equal pay. “To be told that I was demanding and be told that I was the squeaky wheel. It’s not easy to be a woman advocate. …
“[But] it is our duty, our responsibility and it’s something that brings us great joy, to make the game better for the future. And it has been a great burden, one that all of the work that we’ve done is so that the next generation doesn’t have to do the same.”
The facility upgrade should help a club recruit and retain talent – and a permanent head coach, said new sporting director Mark Parsons, who insisted he won’t rush his search for the right replacement for Becki Tweed, who was ousted after Angel City went a disappointing 7-13-6 last season.
“It’s going to be very hard,” he said, “for people to not want to be in this environment.”
What’s an advantage should be the standard, said Willow Bay, who last July became a controlling owner of the club with her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger.
“It sets the bar,” said Bay, the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “But it really should be the norm.”
Around the NWSL and the WNBA (ahem, @LASparks).
The beat goes on: “It’s like, yes, you care about the crest,” Press said. “Yes, you care about the city and the team and a sport. But there’s a larger thing that everyone’s fighting for, and I really feel that there’s a synergy between soccer and basketball particularly in the last few years in this country. In the W, they’re getting the respect and the coverage that is getting closer to what they deserve, and that’s really, really powerful and important thing for women’s soccer, too.”