Individuals descend on New Zealand to cheer for the US girls’s soccer staff
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — The Individuals are right here.
They could nonetheless be jet-lagged, they might nonetheless be sporting sweats, they usually could have been stumbling by the streets of Auckland for the previous few days, however some followers of the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff broke by with their unmistakable pink, white and blue costumes as a part of a boisterous crowd on the opening match of the Girls’s World Cup.
The factor was, the Individuals weren’t even enjoying.
The U.S. girls kick off Saturday in opposition to Vietnam. However David Tritz of Laguna Hills, California, wore a full-body, stars-and-stripes rain swimsuit to see co-host New Zealand upset Norway 1-0 on Thursday.
Tritz is only one of an estimated 20,000 Individuals who’ve already traveled Down Beneath to assist the reigning World Cup champions.
“We flew all this manner,” Tritz mentioned at Eden Park, “you’ll be able to’t not symbolize. You solely stay as soon as.”
Tritz got here to New Zealand together with his spouse and 5 daughters, 4 of whom performed soccer and vary from 34 right down to 21-year-old twins. They beforehand attended the 2015 World Cup, watching the U.S. beat Japan for its third title — the Individuals added one other one in 2019.
His household plans to see seven or eight video games of the event over 10 days in New Zealand and one other eight in Australia.
Of the Individuals who’ve trekked to New Zealand or will accomplish that quickly, roughly 9,000 of them have congregated in a Fb neighborhood began three years in the past by Kristen Pariseau.
There, they’ve deliberate post-match assembly spots, helped one another with journey questions and heard from plenty of useful Kiwis on the native scene.
“Folks had been asking ‘Is anybody else going to go?’ way back when individuals had been making an attempt to arrange and make a plan,” Pariseau mentioned. “So I began it as a central place, after which it’s simply been rising exponentially this final month.”
Pariseau grew up in a hockey household in Michigan, however caught soccer fever after transferring to Atlanta along with her spouse they usually turned Atlanta United season ticket holders. They went to the 2018 males’s World Cup in Russia as a result of her spouse, who hails from Mexico, wished to see her house nation’s staff.
They skipped out on the 2019 Girls’s World Cup, however after seeing the setting on-line, Pariseau mentioned she regretted the choice and instantly began saving, together with airline rewards, for the 2023 version. After 4 years, they flew firstclass from Los Cabos, Mexico, to Mexico Metropolis to Los Angeles to Sydney for a short stick with pals in Australia.
As soon as in Auckland, Pariseau has a pair of banners she made that could be seen from the Eden Park stands. One reads “Win it for Becky” and the opposite “Win it for Mal,” in honor of Becky Sauerbrunn and Mallory Swanson, whose accidents held them out of the event.
Touring to New Zealand to see the U.S. girls’s staff is seemingly a household affair. Dave Perry, an 84-year-old U.S. navy veteran, noticed the 2019 World Cup together with his spouse for his or her fiftieth anniversary.
This time round, he introduced his two daughters, whom he coached of their youth leagues. Liz Perry mentioned she nonetheless performs soccer recreationally. The household, from Milwaukee, will keep by the group stage.
There will not be many extra veteran American followers than Steff Colonna, who’s attending her third Girls’s World Cup.
She performed soccer in school at John Carroll College and mentioned she’s intently adopted the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff for 20-plus years. She typically attends occasions placed on by the American Outlaws, an unofficial assist group for the American nationwide soccer groups.
Now dwelling in San Diego, she mentioned she retains making the funding to assist the U.S. staff for plenty of causes, however primarily due to the visibility it brings to girls’s soccer and ladies’s sports activities as a complete.
“They symbolize our nation they usually symbolize a sport, and what they’re doing for girls’s sports activities is superior,” Colonna mentioned. “You come again since you love the staff. We’re spending some huge cash to return over and assist them. We simply love the staff. It doesn’t damage that they’re the No. 1 staff on the earth.”
Story by Max Ralph.
