America's Team

WPS announced each team's home openers this week and if i'm reading it right, your Chicago Red Stars could be featured on national television via Fox Soccer Channel for each of its first three games.

Game 1: Chicago at St. Louis Athletica, Sunday, April 5 at Ralph Korte Stadium on the lovely campus of Southern Illinois - Edwardsville. It's a small stadium and it would be pretty cool for Local 134 and other Red Stars supporters to make the 272 mile trip down there to help the Red Stars win in our first game ever.

Game 2: Chicago at Washington Freedom, Saturday, April 4 at RFK Stadium*. 2009 will be a good year for Chicagoans in Washington. And maybe, just maybe, the first family will be on hand to cheer their hometown Red Stars on to victory. Malia is a player! And the President-elect is a soccer dad.

* i'm just guessing that the Freedom will play their home opener in the big house.

Game 3: Sky Blue FC at Chicago, April 19 at Toyota Park. The late home opener is a good thing for us. It provides extra time to sell tickets, its more likely to be a little warmer in Chicago, we get to build excitement via two televised away games and we get to come into our home opener with an unblemished 2-0 mark!

It is exciting to know the date of the opening game and i hope you've all purchased your season tickets already. We hope to make a pretty cool announcement about our season tickets before Christmas. If you haven't gotten them yet, please do so by going here. Thank you!

Great Day For Women's Soccer

Really enjoyed yesterday's four hour block of great women's soccer on the Deuce.

First up was North Carolina in the rare underdog position upsetting Notre Dame (who i hate in all sports due to my Marquette heritage) 2-1 for the 2008 NCAA Women's College Cup Championship. Kerri Hanks got the Fighting Irish off to the best possible start with a nice finish on a clear break only 16 seconds into the game.

Milwaukee area native Casey Nogueira put her Superman cape back on and tallied two brilliant goals to lead the Tar Heels to their 20th national championship and 19th NCAA title (they also won something called the AIAW. She also scored the game winner for North Carolina in both of the 2006 NCAA College Cup games.

Nogueira is a trick ball artist and daughter of the greatest indoor soccer goalkeeper ever, Victor Nogueira. i had the chance to draft Victor for the indoor Chicago Power in the MISL dispersal draft (1991?), but a secret (until now) agreement regrettably gave his rights to the Milwaukee Wave in exchange for the Power receiving the rights to some player(s) i no longer recall....sigh.

Anyways, North Carolina's comeback made for good drama. i imagine the Red Stars will eventually have several Notre Dame grads (including Kate Markgraf), so i'll need to learn to temper my anti-ND instincts a bit - love the player/not the school i suppose.

After a short break (where i watched the Packers blow another lead behind Aaron Rodgers' poor leadership converting only one of ten third downs) i watched the US Women's National Team beat North Korea by the same 2-1 score for the u-20 Women's World Cup.

Sydney LeRoux scored her tournament high fifth goal in the 23rd minute then Alex Morgan blasted a golazo game winner in the 42nd minute to ensure the victory. It was even more beautiful in Italian!

Two of the u-20 players should be getting two rings each for yesterday's accomplishments. Meghan Klingenberg and Nikki Washington played for both the u-20s and UNC this season and helped both their teams to championships. That's pretty cool.