In San Jose, the women won a championship first and everyone needs to remember that.
The year was 2001, and the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) was the first fully professional women’s soccer league anywhere in the world. San Jose’s team, the CyberRays, won the title in August of that year.
This Saturday, March 21, most of that team and the front office staff will reunite for a 25th anniversary tailgate before the Bay FC match at PayPal Park. Then they will take the field at halftime for a celebration.
That 2001 team paved the way for everything else that followed. There might not be a Bay FC today, had the CyberRays not stepped onto the field and paved the way for thousands of girls to play and succeed. At the time, the iconic image of Brandi Chastain’s winning penalty kick in the 1999 Women’s World Cup was still fresh in everyone’s minds. But the support for women’s sports back then was nowhere near what it is now, so it was time to start a movement. A serious movement.
“Somebody had to take the first step,” said Marlene Bjornsrud, the CyberRays general manager. “And Brandi, right after we won that championship in August of 2001, she said, ‘No one will ever be the first but us.’ And I’ve thought about that a lot. And lots of people are going to win championships, but we were the first team to win the championship of a fully professional women’s league in our country. And that was special.”
Approximately 17 of the 23 players on that team will descend upon San Jose for the reunion. At least a dozen of the front office staff will join them, including several from out of state. Everyone remembers the deep bonds they originally forged, as innovators in a landscape dominated by male athletes.
When the club started, they converted an empty shell of a building on Park Avenue into the team headquarters. The first time the CyberRays got together, they all sat in a room, looking at each other and getting to know each other. Bjornsrud managed the situation like a champ.
“I bought for each of them just a little charm, a little gold charm that was a wagon wheel,” she recalled. “And I just said, ‘You are pioneers, no one’s ever done this in our country…which means you know whose shoulders you’re standing on to even get to this point, and you are preparing the way for others to come behind you.’”
She did the same thing with the employees.
“We met together, and all the front office staff, and all the team and the coaching staff talked about what that meant and whether we were going to embrace that role.”
When the team won the championship game in Foxboro later that year, the players did not get paid anything close to their male counterparts. Yet the fabric of the team culture was tight. When the players received their bonuses for winning the title, Tisha Venturini gave her check to the front office staff. The Brazilian star Sisleide do Amor Lima, commonly known as Sissi, sent her bonus back home to her mother.
At the time, the CyberRays partied at Gordon Biersch on San Fernando Street following every game, achieving legendary status with the bartenders. For the reunion, Bjornsrud said they were still trying to figure out the logistics.
“Everybody’s been asking about Gordon Biersch,” Bjornsrud said, adding that most people are older and have families now, so it won’t be exactly as before. Since the brewery is no longer around, the afterparty will be somewhere else. However, all fans are welcome at the tailgate in the Audi Lot at PayPal Park.
The San Jose of 2001 was a vastly different place. Women’s sports had not yet turned the massive corners they now have. The CyberRays did not have rock-star investors. Even the men’s league, MLS, was only five years old and already verging on bankruptcy.
Yet the CyberRays have kept in touch all these years. A few weeks ago, Bjornsrud, who now lives in Colorado, came back to San Jose and hung out with a few of the former players. Each still had the wagon wheel and brought it with her.
