Fawcett Finds Family; Foudy Finds Back of the Net
It was what she was listening for, the signature sound that Joy Fawcett hoped she would hear but wasn’t sure she could hear at the opening game of the Women’s World Cup soccer tournament, the United States against Denmark.
“Beef,” Fawcett heard, somehow, coming out of a shrieking, shouting crowd of 78,972 at Giants Stadium. Over the pulsating music, the beating drums coming from some Brazilian fans who had arrived early for the first match even though their team would not play Mexico until much later. Especially over the sound of her own pounding heart.
Fawcett followed the cry of “Beef” to the seats on what would normally be the 50-yard line and locked eyes with her father, Terry Biefeld. Her mother, Bev, sat next to Terry and her husband, Walter Fawcett, and her daughters Katey and Carli, Katey wide awake and Carli sound asleep.
The moment, Fawcett said later, was nearly overwhelming. “All the anticipation, all those people coming to see us play soccer, it was amazing,” the 31-year-old Fawcett said. “But I always find my family. My nickname was “Beef” when I was growing up and that’s what my dad always yells to me.”
For Fawcett, who grew up in Huntington Beach, who graduated from Edison High, who lives in Rancho Santa Margarita and for Julie Foudy, 28, a proud product of the sports fields of Mission Viejo, a moment arrived Saturday at noon Pacific time that neither had ever imagined way back when.
“You have to feel really proud,” Foudy said. “You feel like you’ve done something special.”
Foudy scored the second U.S. goal in a 3-0 victory party by the hosts. After she scored, Foudy did a kooky pose, stolen from the new Austin Powers movie. “OK, I’m a degenerate,” Foudy said an hour after her goal, giddy after spending way too much time stuck in a stuffy room trying to fill up some bottles for a drug test. “I saw Austin Powers twice this week.”
It was that kind of glorious afternoon for women’s soccer. A celebration more than a competition. When players like Fawcett and Foudy had begun kicking around a ball as first-graders, there had been no vision of a day like this--a day of incredible emotion and history played out in front of the largest crowd to ever see a sporting event at Giants Stadium and the largest crowd to ever see a women’s sporting event anywhere.
“This is something we never dreamt of,” Terry Biefeld said. “We all got goose bumps when we saw Joy running out on the field.”
Foudy’s family made it too. Her mom and dad, her brother and sister-in-law and her six-month-old niece Shae for whom, Foudy said, she was required to buy an $85 ticket. “Nobody gets in without a ticket,” Foudy said. “I sucked it up and paid.”
Whether her husband, Ian Sawyers, would make it had been up in the air. Sawyer is a caddy for golfer Beth Daniels. The good news was that the LPGA tour stop this weekend is at Absecon, N.J., on the shore about 90 minutes from Giants Stadium. Luckily for Sawyers, if not for Daniels, a high score was shot on Friday so Daniels had an early tee time Saturday and Sawyers was able to get to the game. “We were kidding that Ian was going to sabotage Beth,” Foudy said. “Really, he didn’t.”
There was a poignancy to the moment for Fawcett as she spoke of never imagining the sound of all these people cheering for American women playing soccer. She pointed out her finger nails--some painted red, some white, some blue--and noted that 5-year-old Katey would have done a more professional job but that Fawcett’s hands might have been shaking Friday night when the paint job was done. “I was so nervous,” she said. “We all were.”
Fawcett was asked about the potential for a professional women’s league being started in the United States and here Fawcett replied with wide eyes and enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t even care if we got paid,” Fawcett said. “Right now it costs us to play in the States. When we’re not in training with the national team and playing for our clubs, we pay to play. We’re not looking to a professional league for money. We just want to be able to stay home and not have to pay.”
For Foudy, this electric moment was, in its way, better than the 1996 Olympics when fans filled the University of Georgia football stadium to see the U.S. win a gold medal. “That felt historic,” Foudy said, “but this, this is our event. In the locker room before the game we were saying it’s ‘Welcome to our party. Let’s put on a show out there.’ Not to lose sight of the fact of what we’re doing here too but this is creating history.”
Finally it was time for Foudy to join her teammates. She wanted to speak to Ian. Fawcett wanted to hug her daughters and maybe shed a tear with her parents. The sounds of the day will never leave their heads, Foudy and Fawcett said. But now there are more games to win so that they might have another historic moment.
