DENVER — Excitement is high for soccer fans across the city as they now have a new professional team to cheer on. The announcementfirst came on Thursday morning, when the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) shared that Denver will be home to a women's professional soccer team and plans to build a stadium for the club.
"Everyone's pumped for it, and we're all just super looking forward to this representation that we're going to have and being able to cheer them on, along with all of our other nationally ranked teams," Kelsey Anderson said.
Anderson played soccer throughout college and currently works with Top XI Soccer Training, where she coaches young players and helps them achieve their goals. She said, "We definitely have a soft spot for women's soccer because they need a little more help. They don't get as many touches as they should be getting right, so we like to provide that platform for women's soccer to take the next step that they need to take."
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Denver chosen as home for new National Women's Soccer League team
While Anderson is thrilled to cheer on the new women's professional soccer team in Denver, she also explained how important it will be to encourage youth to pursue their dreams at a professional level in the future of the sport.
"The sports culture in Colorado is already just fantastic for women's soccer, for youth soccer," said Anderson. "It's a huge bonus to have this national women's soccer team representing Denver. In any career, athletics included, you need to be able to look up and see that next step for you or that end goal, and now the Denver youth has that."
Denver earned the 16th team spot in the NWSL, beating out Cleveland and Cincinnati. The new club will join other championship professional teams calling the Mile High City home.
"I think everyone is super excited to be able to have a new league in Denver, especially to get something that's on the women's side, which we haven't seen a whole lot of, but obviously, huge expansion there and the owners seem to be really, really excited about it, you can tell by the amount that they've invested," Derek Friedman, Owner of Sportsfan said.
There are four Sportsfan stores, and Friedman shared that employees are already asking when the new team's merchandise will be available in stores. For now, he is looking forward to this team's future success and the impact it will have on the community.
"I think when you look at a situation especially like Caitlin Clarke, where she enabled the entirety of that league to really, really explode, I'm expecting and hoping that we're going to find someone like that in the Women's Soccer League, and hopefully she's going to come from the Denver team," Friedman said.
