Malinda Lo

A couple of weeks ago, Amy and I went to a women’s professional soccer game in San Jose. In case you are not a follower of professional women’s soccer, here’s a brief primer: The Women’s Professional Soccer League just launched this year, after the failure of the Women’s United Soccer Association back in 2004. WPS currently includes seven teams, on which you’ll find they’ve carefully distributed various stars from around the world of women’s soccer.

We saw the San Jose team, the FC Gold Pride (apparently the “Pride” here refers to a pride of lions, not Gay Pride — weird, right? ), play the Los Angeles Sol. Since we’re not from San Jose or LA, we didn’t really have a favorite, but Amy was especially psyched to see the Sol because their team roster includes Marta (one name only, like Pele), who is probably the best women’s soccer player in the world.

It was really interesting to go to the game, because the day we were there it must have been a special community day or something; there were girls’ soccer teams and girl soccer players swarming the field before it began. Like little girls from age 6 and up — all in their soccer uniforms. They were really cute! And then the game itself was fun to watch, although it seems like an especially brutal game in terms of endurance. I mean, they run back and forth for two hours, with very little break, and scoring is super hard.

Here are some photos of the women running:

Get the ball!

Aya Miyama (right) of the Los Angeles Sol

Erika (one name only) from Brazil (#20)

Unfortunately for the FC Gold Pride, they lost — in large part because of Marta, who basically kicks ass. However, the LA Sol would have scored even more (LA won 2-0) if the FC Gold Pride goalkeeper hadn’t made so many awesome saves.

I believe that is Marta on the far right

If you haven’t been to a women’s soccer game before and you like watching women play ball (cough), you might give it a try.

Have a great weekend!