Less than a month after returning from American women’s soccer biggest triumph to date, on Christmas Eve 1991 three Washington-based players, at average age 24 and seemingly approaching their peak as players, retired from the U.S. Women’s National Team. Why?
In 1985, Seattle’s Denise Bender was captain of the national team and Sharon McMurtry U.S. Soccer’s female player of the year. Yet the following year they were no longer part of the program. Why?
If one of Washington’s major universities had adopted women’s varsity soccer in the early 1980s, what effect would that have had on their trophy shelves and that of 22-time champion North Carolina?