-The sort of lightbulb moment,
as I call it, happened in the fall of 2021.
The Reign, which is Seattle's NWSL team,
they were in the semifinals.
I was talking to my partner.
I'm like, Let's go to a real soccer bar
and watch the game, you know, and have some cold beers.
And he was like,
Well, you should probably call and see if they're playing it.
I did. I started calling around. And the first one said, Who?
And the second one said, No,
we're not going to play that game.
And the third one essentially was like,
Well, we have it scheduled, but it'll come on
after the football game is over on that screen.
And I was just shocked. We were in 2021.
We had won some of the best players in the world
on our team and none of our local soccer bars
were even playing this game.
-Huerta crossing Rapinoe!
Megan Rapinoe's done it now!
And put the Reign ahead!
-And I was just kind of raving about it.
And my partner was like, Why don't you do something?
Why don't you change it?
Why don't you change the game?
Open a place and play women's sports.
I was like, Oh my god, that's the coolest idea ever.
And, you know, it was one of those moments
where you know you've hit on something that is so needed,
that it is so right.
And I just couldn't let it go. And in February,
just a few months later, this lovely place came to be.
( large crowd cheers )
-To have a place like Rough & Tumble here in Seattle,
it's like nothing I've ever experienced.
Where they just, you know, they prioritize women,
and queer women at that. It's very empowering, very,
you know, inspiring for younger kids
that want to play sports and look up to,
you know, women who are athletes.
And it's like, it's very motivating.
Just to have that here is just incredible.
-I think Seattle is one of the cities
that has one of the better communities,
that is certainly the most welcoming
and feeding of the queer community.
And I think that Rough & Tumble
certainly is just innately part of that.
-You know, if you would have asked me,
Hey, do you like sports bars?
My immediate answer is absolutely not.
No way, that doesn't sound like my kind of vibe.
But when it's women's sports and there's a bunch of female and,
like, women-identifying folks there,
it just feels like a really positive, fun experience.
-Yeah, after this I'm kind of like
maybe I should follow the WNBA,
maybe we should go to a basketball game or something.
-It is a very diverse crowd.
It's, you know, you'll have newborns in strollers.
You'll have grandmothers.
You'll have, you know, pre-Title IX women who come in crying
because they cannot have ever imagined
that a place like this would exist when they were growing up.
This is a really cool environment,
and it is just a microcosm of what women's
sports fans already are.
-I think it's no secret
that women's sports are taking over the whole world.
I think the interest has always been there for women's sports,
but now we just have the perfect place, dare I say,
to go and watch it together with our friends, with our family.
I remember growing up,
who I had to watch was the US Women's National Team,
and that was really all, and it was hard to find them on TV.
And they were my heroes, but I barely got to see them.
And I just think it's so important
for little girls to relate to somebody and be like,
This is what I want to do.
-One of the things
that I knew I was really looking forward to doing
was having more of an impact on encouraging
young women athletes,
especially in non-binary and girl-identifying kids,
to get into sports, to start playing sports.
So one of the things that I'm incredibly proud of
is helping bring the USLW team to Ballard.
It's a semi-pro level team
and it's a very important part of the pyramid,
the development pyramid in soccer.
The more opportunities we can open up
for athletes to be able to play,
it gives more opportunities for kids to consider,
wow, you know,
my playing career isn't over at the end of high school,
or my playing career isn't over at the end of college.
-When I was younger,
I didn't have a professional sports league to look for.
You could have a dream team,
but if they don't need your position,
then they're not going to look at you.
So it's having all these different opportunities
and different places.
And I just think that's so beautiful.
-It's making it normal.
It's making it, like, okay
for a little girl to be like,
Okay, if I work really hard, this is going to be my job.
-I just have countless stories of, like,
little girls, three, four, seven, eight,
looking up at screens and being mesmerized because
they've never really seen women players on TV screens.
And one of my favorite stories
is these two little girls with their mom
were looking up at the screen and watching a WNBA game.
And one of them looked over at their mom
and said, Mom,
I didn't know girls could be basketball players.
Can I be that when I grow up?
I mean, that's,
seeing oneself represented on a screen shifted something.
It gave her the idea that there was an opportunity,
it gave her the potential, it gave her something
to consider that had not been in her brain before.
And if that is all we do, we've done everything right.
I hope it's a lot more than that.
♪♪
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