A Team of Their Own

There must have been something in the pressurized air on the flight back from the Broncos’ NCAA women’s soccer championship win in May 2021.

The day before, the No. 11 Santa Clara University team had clinched the national title in a thrilling overtime shootout against top-seeded Florida State. It was a fairytale victory after a season full of hurdles: pandemic delays, wildfires, precious little practice.

In the crowded stands for that final match were four former SCU champions—Brandi Chastain ’91, Danielle Slaton ’02, Aly Wagner ’02, and Leslie Osborne ’05—cheering their faces off.

This group snagged seats on the Broncos’ flight to the Bay Area. On board, they could practically smell victory. Surrounded by accomplishment and unbridled female joy, they got contact high from the winner’s high. You get the point.

So they decided to do something a little crazy. They would start a professional women’s team of their own.

This spring, that dream became a reality. Their plan for an expansion team was officially selected by the National Women’s Soccer League out of 82 bids from cities across the country. Bay Football Club is the NWSL’s 14th team, with a record-setting investment of $125 million. It starts play in the 2024 season.

While the spark for Bay FC fully ignited on that plane ride, its foundation was laid long ago. Back when Chastain, Slaton, Wagner, and Osborne were little girls, swimming in their children’s rec league jerseys, barely bigger than the black and white ball they attempted to dribble. Because, like so many little girls who play sports, they were told to temper their expectations of what’s possible.

That sentiment might seem trite today. But think of Brandi Chastain, she of the six-pack abs and black sports bra, pumping her arms in triumph, immortalized on Wheaties boxes and magazine covers in one of the most famous sports photos of all time. That person was told she might want to rethink trying out for her middle school soccer team that was co-ed in name only. “The coach said, ‘This isn’t really for you,’” Chastain recalls. It wasn’t until another player—a boy—stepped up, “and said, ‘Coach, I think you need to watch these girls play,’” that she got on the field.

What might’ve become of her had she accepted that coach’s words, had she believed that she wasn’t meant to be one of the greatest athletes of her generation? Or Wagner or Osborne had they gone to University of North Carolina or Notre Dame, respectively, to win those schools’ umpteenth national championships instead of SCU’s first in 2001, because they know where real glory lies? Or Slaton had athletic scholarships not been opened up to women soccer players at SCU just before she arrived? What would’ve happened to those girls had they acquiesced, had they been content to simply play and not admit that what they really wanted was to win?

All four came to Santa Clara knowing there weren’t many options for women to play soccer after college. Maybe they could move abroad and play pro in Europe. Maybe they’d be one of the lucky few selected for the U.S. National Team. Maybe they could play for barely any money in either of the two previous, short-lived iterations of a women’s professional league in America. All of them found a way to continue playing after graduation, but they forged those paths for the most part on their own.

THE MAKING OF BAY FC

Aly Wagner says her initial reaction to founding a professional women’s team wasn’t so rah-rah. She was apprehensive, in part, because she could see the uphill battle the U.S. league faced—and still faces—in the global game.

But the more the women talked, Wagner realized that they could play a real role in shaping the future of women’s professional soccer, that they could be architects from the ground up. “What I’ve always been attracted to is doing something differently, and rewriting conceptions about the norm, rewriting what we accept,” she says. “There were just so many things that I was excited to potentially drive change around.”

Besides the massive investment, though, there’s a compelling argument to be made that one of the biggest reasons they were successful is because they’re players themselves. Between the four of them, they share several Olympic medals and FIFA World Cup wins, years of playing professionally in the U.S. and abroad, and loads of coaching experience. They know what it’s like to both play for and lead a winning team.

Jeff Kassouf, founder of The Equalizer, one of the few news sites exclusively covering women’s soccer in North America, says the name recognition of the group in the world of soccer was likely part of their team’s appeal to the NWSL. “Angel City [FC in Los Angeles] has ex-players who are involved as investors, but they weren’t there at ground zero [like they are in the Bay].”

In the Bay Area, Kassouf says, the founders have a top media market, they have investors with deep pockets around every corner, and they have their pick of places to play. In July, Bay FC officially confirmed longstanding rumors that it would share PayPal Stadium in San Jose with Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes. You have to check all those boxes to be successful, Kassouf says: “Ownership plus investment plus infrastructure.” And the so-called Core Four have all three.

The most striking thing Kassouf says, though, is that until Bay FC, he hadn’t seen anyone in women’s pro soccer be so public about their intentions. “They were the only people I can recall that came out and said ‘We want a team. Here’s what we’re doing to get one.’”

From infancy, women are taught to be coy rather than eager. To be humble when they’re victorious rather than exuberant. To not let on about just how long it takes to appear effortlessly perfect. Be mysterious, we’re told, make them come to you.

Well, screw that. As Slaton says of turning in their bid, “We just wanted to win.”

She thinks we’re ready now. Go to a NWSL game today, and you’re in for an experience. There are legitimate food and drink options, loud music, the wave regularly coursing through stands.

Angel City FC—the L.A. team pop culture likes to credit for really ramping up the popularity of women’s soccer thanks to a bunch of famous actresses investing and an HBO documentary on its making—sold 15,000 season tickets by the time it played its first game in 2022. The first-ever home game of San Diego Wave FC in September 2022 hosted a sellout crowd of 32,000 fans that marveled at the skydivers landing directly on the field of the brand-new, $310 million Snapdragon Stadium before kickoff.

Ceyda Mumcu, associate professor of sports management at University of New Haven, says there are a handful of societal changes that have occurred that set the stage for NWSL success, including the #MeToo movement. “It’s an extension of the women’s movement. Women have had enough, they’re standing up for their rights,” Mumcu says. “And women’s soccer in particular, they’ve carried the fight for equal pay for a very long time. They’re not hesitant to be the poster child for that, we’ve seen that in one court case after another.”

Venture capitalist Jasmine Robinson certainly has. With Kara Nortman, one of the founders of Angel City FC, Robinson cofounded the Monarch Collective, an investment firm that launched in March 2023 with $100 million to focus on women’s professional sports. “We’ve already seen the growth of the men’s side, what works well and what doesn’t,” Robinson says. “We’re seeing those same signals [in women’s sports] and it gave us the conviction that now we’re at an inflection point.”

It takes gumption to be among the first to support a thing; and conviction if that thing doesn’t immediately find success. Establishing Bay FC cost a record amount, and it’ll likely take a beat before the team sees profit. But Sixth Street, et. al., are certainly not going to be alone in shelling out for a women’s team.

Just look at Boston—at the same time the NWSL selected the bid for Bay FC, a Boston expansion team was also approved with play slated to start in 2026. In addition to paying the same steep franchise fee, the all-female Boston Unity Soccer Partners ownership group is proposing a $30 million renovation of the historic White Stadium.

The NWSL and teams like Bay FC are changing that for today’s players. Midfielder Annie Karich ’26 has a few years left at SCU, but if her stats are any indication, she’s plotting a path toward going pro. During her first season, she was named the West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year for women’s soccer and called up to the U.S. Women’s Youth National Team, an important development partner for the National Women’s Soccer League.

Karich says she’s impressed with how far pro soccer has come for women. Growing up in the competitive soccer circuit, she knew of girls who went pro and struggled to afford basic housing, or had to work side hustles. “It wasn’t a good lifestyle, it wasn’t a job. They played because they love the game, now people can make it a lifestyle,” she says.

It feels like people care about them—girls who play sports—Karich says. Finally. And having a pro team in Santa Clara’s backyard only validates that feeling. “It will be good for the young players coming up to have that access,” she says. Also, “having a team from your hometown, it’s cool, it gives you a goal, a dream to one day play in front of your family and friends.”

It’s a sentiment nearly identical to one uttered by another Bronco soccer star, Jordan Angeli ’07, who’s working to establish a pro team in her hometown of Denver. Despite being a stronghold for men’s sports, Colorado doesn’t have a presence in the largest women’s sports leagues in the U.S., the WNBA or the NWSL. “When I was a player, I never got to play in front of my home squad,” Angeli told The Athletic. “I never got to have my extended family, my friends from high school, everyone that knows me and helped me get to where I got to come and watch me play on a professional level. I want others to be able to experience that.” Angeli is part of a coalition, For Denver FC, working to drum up investors and submit a bid this fall.

Being confident in yourself and your abilities is a necessary yet risky strategy for women who are actively playing the game: Too much confidence, you’re conceited; too little, you’re not taken seriously.

Luckily for the women behind Bay FC, they’re used to playing the long game. They’re used to fighting—even among themselves—for what they want.

“That’s what you do in sports,” says Slaton. “Like how many times did we fight [among ourselves] during scrimmage? … You learn how to be competitive, you learn how to fight on the field, but you do it in a respectful way that doesn’t damage the relationship.”

It’s what women have been doing on the field—and in boardrooms and courtrooms and so many other places of power—for so, so long. Gender equality itself is one big long game. And being confident in yourself and your abilities is a necessary yet risky strategy for women who are actively playing: Too much confidence, you’re conceited; too little, you’re not taken seriously.

It’s a tightrope the Core Four are very used to walking. Asked why they stuck around to build Bay FC after that initial buzz from SCU’s 2021 championship win wore off and years, literal years, of fundraising, networking, and dear-god-the-paperwork unspooled before them, they say they didn’t see it as a choice.

“Soccer has always been something I knew I’d be involved in. It kind of chose me,” says Chastain.