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      NBA Fines and Suspends Phoenix Suns Owner Robert Sarver

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      An investigation found that the owner, Robert Sarver, had used racial slurs and treated female employees inequitably. The N.B.A. fined Sarver $10 million.The N.B.A. is suspending Robert Sarver, the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, for one year and fining him $10 million after an investigation determined that he had engaged in misconduct, including using racial slurs, yelling at employees and treating female employees unfairly.“The statements and conduct described in the findings of the independent investigation are troubling and disappointing,” Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, said in a statement.He added: “Regardless of position, power or intent, we all need to recognize the corrosive and hurtful impact of racially insensitive and demeaning language and behavior. On behalf of the entire N.B.A. I apologize to all of those impacted by the misconduct outlined in the investigators’ report. We must do better.”Sarver said in a statement that he accepted the consequences of the N.B.A.’s decision.“While I disagree with some of the particulars of the N.B.A.’s report, I would like to apologize for my words and actions that offended our employees,” he said. “I take full responsibility for what I have done. I am sorry for causing this pain, and these errors in judgment are not consistent with my personal philosophy or my values.”Sarver also owns the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said the findings of the investigation into Robert Sarver’s conduct were “troubling and disappointing.”Jeff Chiu/Associated PressThe N.B.A. began the investigation in response to a November 2021 article by ESPN about accusations of mistreatment against Sarver. After the article’s publication, the league retained the New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation.On Tuesday, the firm and the N.B.A. released a 43-page report that found that Sarver “had engaged in conduct that clearly violated common workplace standards,” which included inappropriate comments about female employees’ appearance and bullying. He also engaged in inappropriate physical conduct toward male employees on four occasions, according to the report.More than 100 individuals who were interviewed by investigators said they witnessed behavior that “violated applicable standards.” There was a general sense among employees that Sarver felt that workplace rules did not apply to him, according to the report.Sarver also made crude jokes, cursed at employees and told a pregnant employee that she “would be unable to do her job upon becoming a mother,” according to the report. Witnesses recalled Sarver saying that the employee would be busy “breastfeeding” and that a “baby needs their mom, not their father.” The employee cried in response to Sarver’s comments, according to the report. Sarver later asked why women “cry so much.”Sarver also “repeated the N-word when recounting the statements of others,” according to the report. Sarver was in the presence of players, coaches and members of the front office when he used the word during a team-building exercise during the 2012-13 season.What to Know:Robert Sarver Misconduct CaseCard 1 of 6A suspension and a fine. More

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      Bill Russell Paved the Way for Black Coaches to Defy Doubters

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      When getting hired as a Black coach seemed “far-fetched,” as one coach said, Russell showed that it could be done — and that it could lead to championships.Bill Russell and Red Auerbach came to an agreement.Auerbach, the longtime Boston Celtics coach, had confided in Russell that he planned to retire from coaching. Russell and Auerbach had created a dynasty together, with Russell dominating at center and Auerbach cementing their championship victories with plumes of celebratory cigar smoke.They would each write down their top-five preferred coaches to succeed Auerbach and consider any name who landed on both lists.They found no matches. Auerbach had already approached Russell about taking over the job and continuing on as a player, but Russell, who had witnessed the toll coaching took on Auerbach, quickly rebuffed him.Now, after the lists crisscrossed candidates, Russell reconsidered his position and figured nobody else, beyond Auerbach, could coach Bill Russell quite like Bill Russell.“When Red and I had started to discuss my becoming coach, there were some things we didn’t have to say,” Russell wrote in his book about his friendship with Auerbach, “Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend,” in 2009. “For example, when I was finally named publicly, I didn’t know that I had just become the first African American coach in the history of major league sports.”It was 1966, and the distinction did not cross his mind until Boston news media members informed him. “When I took the job, one reporter wrote seven articles focusing on why I shouldn’t be coaching the Celtics,” Russell wrote.Russell, who died Sunday at 88, would go on to win two championships as the head coach of the Celtics, his 10th and 11th championship rings. He would also coach the Seattle SuperSonics and the Sacramento Kings and inspire a generation of Black players to try their hand at coaching, too. The skepticism that accompanied his hiring in Boston is perhaps less of an issue now, but still a factor in whether Black people are hired to coach in the N.B.A. today. Bernie Bickerstaff, who is Black, watched Russell take over as head coach of the Celtics just as he was about to enter into a life of coaching. He began as an assistant at the University of San Diego under Phil Woolpert, who had coached Russell at the University of San Francisco.Bernie Bickerstaff, who has been the head coach of five N.B.A. teams, said he was inspired by Bill Russell.Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images“At that time, you didn’t think about anything like that,” said Bickerstaff, who became the coach of the SuperSonics in 1985. “In fact, if you’re sitting back and you’re a young Black at that time, it seemed far-fetched.”Russell, the coach, mimicked Russell the player. He was a longtime civil rights activist who coached the Celtics during the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. “It rubbed a lot of Bostonians the wrong way,” Russell wrote in his 2009 book. “At the time, Boston was a totally segregated city — and I vehemently opposed segregation.”He demanded respect and competed fiercely during an era when he had no assistant coaches. He played and coached the Celtics for three seasons before closing out the N.B.A.’s most successful and long-lasting championship reign.“That speaks volumes in itself for who he was as a person and a humanitarian, if you understand the culture of this country, especially in certain places,” said Jim Cleamons, who is Black and became the coach of the Dallas Mavericks in 1996.Al Attles and Lenny Wilkens followed Russell as the next Black N.B.A. head coaches. They, like Russell, led teams to championships. It took a while for the rest of the professional sports world to catch up. Frank Robinson, Russell’s former high school basketball teammate, became Major League Baseball’s first Black manager, in Cleveland, in 1975. Art Shell became the N.F.L.’s first Black head coach in the modern era for the Oakland Raiders in 1989.“Bill Russell was an inspiration, period, with coaching,” Bickerstaff said. “But as a human being, during times when it wasn’t popular to be someone of our complexion, he stood up and he represented. He had no fear. He was genuine. He was a success. He was a leader on and off the court.”Russell became the fifth person inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach when he earned enshrinement as a coach last year.Jim Cleamons was the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks across two seasons in the 1990s. Tim Clayton for The New York TimesBy then, something that seemed far-fetched when Bickerstaff broke into coaching seemed common. Half of the N.B.A.’s 30 coaches will be Black heading into the 2022-23 season, including J.B. Bickerstaff, Bernie’s son and the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.But as recently as 2020, only four Black coaches roamed N.B.A. sidelines. “There is a certain natural ebb and flow to the hiring and firing, frankly, of coaches, but the number is too low right now,” N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said before the 2020 finals.Other sports leagues continued to lag. Nearly two decades after Russell won his first championship as a coach, Al Campanis, a Los Angeles Dodgers executive, expressed doubt about the ability of Black people to hold managerial level positions.“I don’t believe it’s prejudice,” Campanis said in an interview on ABC’s “Nightline” in 1987. “I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.”M.L.B. recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major league debut, yet only two of its current managers — Houston’s Dusty Baker and the Dodgers’ Dave Roberts — are Black.In the N.F.L., Brian Flores, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, recently sued the league over discriminatory hiring practices. Flores is the son of Honduran immigrants. The N.F.L. created a diversity advisory committee and mandated that every team hire a minority offensive coach after Flores’s suit.Russell did not talk often about being the first Black coach in a major sports league. But after his hiring, he felt the stress that awaited him as the “the first Negro coach,” as he wrote in his book.The hope of his relationship with Auerbach evolving from a superficial coach-player bond into a deeper friendship comforted him.“So I started looking forward to that,” he wrote.Russell left the Celtics in 1969 but took over the SuperSonics from 1973 until 1977. He guided Seattle to the franchise’s first-ever playoffs, but the success he found in Boston eluded him.Russell coached a final season with the Sacramento Kings in 1987-88 before he was fired and moved into the front office after a 17-41 start.J.B. Bickerstaff, Bernie Bickerstaff’s son, has coached the Cleveland Cavaliers since 2020. He’s one of 15 Black coaches in the N.B.A.Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images“With a lot of truly great players, it was tough for him to understand why regular players did not have the same drive, focus and commitment to winning that he did,” Jerry Reynolds, an assistant for Russell on the Kings, said in an interview Sunday. “There’s just not very many people wired like that. That’s why they’re great. In some ways, it was hard for him to understand that. Most of the guys, they wanted to win. They didn’t have the need to win every game like him.”All along, Russell remained true to who he was while coaching.Bickerstaff recalled Russell offering a set of golf clubs to one of Woolpert’s sons instead of signing an autograph for him — an act that Russell was known to steadfastly refuse throughout his career.Cleamons said that a booster introduced his high school team to Russell shortly after it had won the Ohio state championship. Russell hardly looked up from his soup. He hated to be interrupted from a meal.Cleamons understood the mind-set after reading Russell’s autobiography.Before being thought of as a basketball player, before being looked upon as a coach, Russell wanted to be viewed as a human being.“He was a little bit like Muhammad Ali,” Reynolds said. “He was always who he was. Society and people changed. Things changed to fit more like it should have been all along.” More

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      Pretty in Any Color: Women in Basketball Make the Style Rules

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      Angel Reese considers herself “a pink kind of girl.”Pink nails, pink hair tie, pink shoes, sometimes even “a little bit of pink in my lashes,” Reese said of the eyelash extensions she applies before basketball games. “Everything’s pink.”It’s all part of the pregame routine for Reese, who in May transferred to Louisiana State after a breakout season on Maryland’s women’s basketball team. Before Reese hits the court, she swipes on lip gloss and gels down her edges — her hairline — to prevent flyaways.“Grandma would always emphasize, ‘Don’t let anybody make your makeup sweat,’” Reese said.Reese’s devotion to her appearance for games expresses who she is as much as her playing style. Players in women’s basketball freely mix a traditionally feminine beauty standard with finishing touches that are popular in Black and Latina culture, like gelled edges. It’s a freedom that some say is an advancement in a sport whose athletes have historically been pressured to fit a mass-market ideal that has long benefited straight, white women. Reese is Black.But the introduction of name, image and likeness deals in college sports and an influx of marketing money in professional women’s basketball have added dollars-and-cents stakes to female players’ decisions to glam up. In interviews with a dozen college and professional players, women talked about how the decision on how to express themselves through their appearance has been changing.“I’ve never really felt the pressure until the N.I.L. thing started,” said Reese, whose endorsement deals include Xfinity, Amazon, Wingstop and a Washington, D.C.-area supermarket chain.Camille Lenain for The New York Times‘There is a pressure for me to look a certain way.’Stanford forward Cameron Brink usually applies concealer, eyebrow gel, mascara and maybe a little blush before she heads out for a game, but she scoffed at the idea of in-game touch-ups. “I look like this when I was playing, I’m going to live with it,” she said.Her shot-blocking was a key piece of Stanford’s run to the 2022 Final Four, where the team lost to Connecticut in front of 3.23 million TV viewers, a 19 percent increase over the previous season and a 49 percent bump from 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s also a swelling fan base that follows Brink on social media. She posts makeup tutorials, which she loves because she views makeup as art. “It’s really relaxing to me,” she said. Brink has had deals with ThirdLove, Visible Mobile, the energy drink Celsius and Portland Gear.She acknowledged that her following — 203,000 on Instagram and 62,800 on TikTok — had built up at least in part “because I do play into that role of being feminine and dressing femininely.”“There is a pressure for me to look a certain way,” said Brink, who is white. “Sometimes it’s refreshing to go out and play sports and not worry about it.”Stanford’s Cameron Brink said that she felt some pressure to conform to traditionally feminine beauty standards but that her beauty routine was also something she enjoyed.Rikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesRikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesLast year, the N.C.A.A. changed its rules to allow college athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses in marketing deals. Women’s college basketball players quickly began out-earning athletes in every other sport besides football, according to the marketing company Opendorse. Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, who is white, signed with Gatorade for an estimated $1 million.Blake Lawrence, a co-founder of Opendorse, said female college basketball players had outshined their male counterparts in the N.I.L. marketplace in part because of how they distinguish themselves through their appearance.“They’re willing to create content; they’re willing to create a character that you want to follow and cheer for while on the court, while on the track, while on the grass,” Lawrence said. “That may be through hairstyle changes; that may be through makeup changes; that may be through the accessories that you bring to the field.”But with that can come tremendous pressure to fit traditional notions of attractiveness, adding another layer of competition to college basketball.“Comparing yourself to other people — oh, this girl is really pretty; oh, she looks really pretty — it’s hard,” Oklahoma guard Kelbie Washington said.Washington enjoys spraying on perfume as part of her pregame routine (Jimmy Choo is her favorite), and she pays for eyelash extensions, which can cost more than $130 a set.“Everyone is human,” she said of the urge to compare herself with others. “Everyone has those emotions, whether they say it out loud or not.”‘Women have to be so much more marketable than men.’TV ratings for college and W.N.B.A. games are rising, and the profiles of the players — among the most vocal and visible social justice activists in sports — are exploding.Within that explosion, Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State, sees the players driving a generational shift, a reframing of norms. “Athletes themselves are pushing back against historical ideas of what it means to be a female athlete and what’s acceptable to be performed as a female athlete,” Jackson said, adding that the W.N.B.A. is “a good example” of that.Nefertiti A. Walker, an associate professor in sports management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a former college basketball player, said players didn’t necessarily feel as if they had to fit the usual standards.“What you’re seeing is certainly athletes now who, because of the changes we’ve seen in college sport — they all have pride nights, there’s gay marriage now — all these changes that have happened in their lifetime that signal it might be OK to perform their gender in a different way,” she said.That may be true on the court, but a recent swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated suggested a narrower view of sex appeal, which can be an important factor in marketing. The magazine included five W.N.B.A. players in bikinis and one-piece swimsuits with cutouts.Courtney Williams, an All-Star guard on the Connecticut Sun, said on Twitter that the shoot would have been better if it had included a player in a sports bra and baggy shorts. “There’s more than one way to look sexy, and I hope in the future we can tap into that,” she said.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesCamille Lenain for The New York TimesRikkí D Wright for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesJonquel Jones was the W.N.B.A.’s most valuable player in 2021. “If u don’t fit into the normal stereotype of what feminine is or what it ‘should be’ you lose opportunities,” Jones said in an August 2020 Twitter post. “Women have to be so much more marketable than men.”W.N.B.A. players, with a maximum base salary of about $230,000, earn far less than their millionaire counterparts in the N.B.A., making marketing dollars even more important. The W.N.B.A. has a pool of $1 million that it must spend on marketing deals for players, and each team has to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 per year on player marketing deals. Any unspent amount carries over to the next season on top of the minimum.The league said it selects players to participate in marketing efforts based on a variety of factors: on-court performance, an established personal brand with an active fan base, and the willingness to travel and participate in league events.“Ideas about bodies play out most explicitly on the bodies of athletes — harmful ideas and also positive ideas,” Jackson said. “That’s another way in which this can be a space of conflict and a space of harm, too, depending on the way those ideas are packaged and sold.”‘They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete.’Tiffany Mitchell likes to feel the swing of her ponytail as she runs the court.Mitchell, who is Black, has often worn her hair in long, braided styles past her waist since she starred at South Carolina from 2012 to 2016. This kind of protective hairstyling allows her to go longer between restyling and can prevent breakage during the grind of the season with the W.N.B.A.’s Indiana Fever.Those swinging braids became an issue during the W.N.B.A. off-season in December, when she was competing with the Melbourne Boomers, a professional women’s team in Australia. Basketball Australia, the sport’s governing body, said the league’s players had to tie their hair back or up, mistakenly attributing the policy to a FIBA rule that was no longer in effect. Mitchell, one of just three Black players on the Boomers’ roster, felt targeted, since she had never had to change her hair for other international competitions. Basketball Australia later apologized and rescinded what it called a “discriminatory” policy.“They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete,” Mitchell said. “So I think that me bringing it to their attention called out the ignorance because there have been players in this league that have had braids before me, and it was never an issue.”Tiffany Mitchell loves playing basketball while wearing long braids. But that became an issue when she was competing in Australia.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times‘When I look good, I feel good, I play good.’As early as fifth grade, Deja Kelly’s mother encouraged her to create a signature hairstyle.“She would call it a ‘D-I do’: If you want to go D-I, you have to look like you play D-I,” Kelly said.She adopted a slicked-back ponytail or a bun as her preferred hairstyles. Her glam routine now — eyelash extensions, a tight bun and detailed edges — “has never affected my performance” as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s leading scorer last season. Kelly has had endorsement deals with Dunkin’, Beats by Dre, Forever 21 and the sports drink Barcode, among others.“For me, when I look good, I feel good, I play good,” Kelly said. “That’s something I always prided myself in.”Walker, the sports management professor, said her studies on women’s sports pointed to a trend: Women in basketball are showcasing greater agency and self-determination by glamming.Video by Gabriella Angotti-JonesDiJonai Carrington of the W.N.B.A.’s Connecticut Sun said she felt that she played better after she had gone through her glam routine.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times“A lot of women’s basketball players feel free to express themselves, to perform in a way aesthetically that accomplishes whatever they want to accomplish,” Walker said. “Sometimes we underestimate how business savvy they are, particularly in this day and age.”Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington has had an endorsement deal with Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand. She makes sure she has on her 20-millimeter mink eyelash extensions before every game. Her nails, typically coated with some sort of bright polish, are usually done with acrylic extensions. She’s grown so accustomed to applying gel to her hairline that it takes her only about 30 seconds.“I feel like I play better. I don’t know if I do or I don’t, but I just feel like I do,” Carrington said. “And I never have wanted to compromise one thing or another, whether that’s being a hooper and being a dog on the court and still being able to look a certain way.” More

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      Once an ‘Easy Way Out’ for Equality, Women’s Soccer Is Now a U.S. Force

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      Brooke Volza and the other girls who play in the top division of high school soccer in Albuquerque know all about the Metro Curse: The team that wins the city’s metro tournament at the start of the season is doomed to end the year without a state championship.So when Cibola High School defied that fate with Volza scoring the only goal in the team’s 1-0 victory against Carlsbad High School before a cheering stadium crowd at the University of New Mexico last year, it was pandemonium. “I started crying. I started hugging everyone,” Volza, 17, said, describing the experience as “times 10 amazing.”Now the ball she used to score that goal sits on a shelf in her bedroom, covered with her teammates’ autographs and jersey numbers. Across it in large capital letters are the words, “2021 STATE CHAMPIONS.”Fifty years ago, Volza’s experience of sprawling and robust competitive high school soccer was effectively unheard-of in the United States. Yet thanks to Title IX, which became law in 1972 and banned sex discrimination in education, generations of girls have had the promise of access to sports and other educational programs.Brooke Volza at Cibola High School in Albuquerque.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesAsia Lawyer, a rising senior at Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAnd girls’ soccer, perhaps more than any other women’s sport, has grown tremendously in the 50 years since. School administrators quickly saw adding soccer as a cost-effective way to comply with the law, and the rising interest helped youth leagues swell. Talented players from around the globe came to the United States. And as millions of American women and girls benefited, the best of them gave rise to a U.S. women’s national program that has dominated the world stage.“Once Title IX broke down those barriers, and let women and girls play sports, and said they have to be provided with equal opportunities, the girls came rushing through,” said Neena Chaudhry, the general counsel and senior adviser for education at the National Women’s Law Center. “They came through in droves.”A 50-Year Rise Out of NowhereWomen’s participation in high school and college athletics surged after the passage of Title IX in 1972, and no sport has added more players than soccer.

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      Girls’ Participation in High School Sports
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1978-79 academic year.Source: National Federation of State High School AssociationsBy The New York Times

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      Women’s Participation in N.C.A.A. Divisions I, II and III
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1981-82 academic year. Some schools were added to the data in 1995-96.Source: N.C.A.A.By The New York TimesBefore Title IX passed, an N.C.A.A. count found only 13 women’s collegiate soccer teams in the 1971-72 season, with 313 players. In 1974, the first year in which a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations tracked girls’ participation across the United States, it counted 6,446 girls playing soccer in 321 schools in just seven states, mostly in New York. That number climbed to about 394,100 girls playing soccer in high schools across the country during the 2018-19 school year, with schools often carrying multiple teams and states sponsoring as many as five divisions.Mountain View Los Altos stretching during the tournament in Redmond, the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn 2018-19, the most recent season counted because of the coronavirus pandemic, there were 3.4 million girls overall participating in high school sports, compared with 4.5 million boys.Many of those athletes have overcome fears to try out for a team. Some have practiced late into the night, running sprints after goofing off with teammates. Some have found archrivals through competition, and plenty have grappled with the sting of defeat. Numerous girls and women on the soccer pitch have felt the thrill of a goal, and the pride of being part of something bigger than themselves.“We are the heart and soul of soccer at Cibola,” Volza said.Title IX is a broad law, and was not originally intended to encompass sports. Its origins lie in fighting discrimination against women and girls in federally funded academic institutions. But as the regulations were hashed out, they eventually encompassed athletics, and it helped bridge disparities beyond the classroom. Today, Title IX is perhaps best known for its legacy within women’s interscholastic athletics.Despite initial and heavy opposition to the law because of a perceived threat to men’s athletic programs, the N.C.A.A. eventually sponsored women’s sports, including soccer in 1982. Before that, only a handful of teams played one another around the country.The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a dynasty that has won 21 N.C.A.A. championships and produced inimitable players including Mia Hamm, began its run playing against high schoolers.“We didn’t really have anyone to play,” said Anson Dorrance, the head coach of the women’s team since its inception in 1979. He described how he cobbled together a schedule that first season. One travel soccer club, the McLean Grasshoppers, “came down to U.N.C. and beat us like a drum,” he said.Florida Gators Coach Samantha Bohon, left, talking with an assistant coach, Jocie Rix, as they scout players during the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThe playoffs are a big showcase for high school players to be seen by top college coaches.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAfter the N.C.A.A. brought women’s soccer into the fold, participation rates went from 1,855 players on 80 teams across all three divisions in 1982 to nearly 28,000 players across 1,026 teams in 2020-21.Now, the N.C.A.A. claims soccer as the most expanded women’s sports program among universities in the last three decades.Current and former athletic directors, sports administrators and coaches attribute the rise of soccer to several factors. Initially, complying with the law was a game of numbers and dollars: Soccer is a relatively large sport, where average roster sizes typically float between 20 and 26 players. The generous roster sizes helped schools meet the requirements of the law to offer similar numbers of opportunities to male and female students.For administrators, soccer was also economical: It needed only a field, a ball and two goals. It was also a relatively easy sport to learn.“At the time schools were interested in, ‘How can I add sports for women that wouldn’t cost me very much?’” said Donna Lopiano, founder and president of Sports Management Resources and a former chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation. She added: “Schools were looking for the easy way out.”The shifts did not begin until the late 1980s and early 1990s. College programs increasingly gained varsity status — often pressured by litigation — which created scholarship opportunities and made soccer a pathway to higher education. The game boomed at the high school level, where it became one of the most popular sports, fourth in terms of participation rates for girls for 2018-19, according to the high school federation (the top three girls’ sports were track and field, volleyball and basketball).An under-14 match in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesA cottage industry of club teams also sprang up around the country, as athletes jockeyed for attention from college coaches. The youth game grew, and university teams became a farm system for the elite world stage, as women struggled to play the sport in many countries outside the United States.The U.S. women’s national team went largely unnoticed when it played its first international match in 1985. It also got little attention in 1991 when it won the first Women’s World Cup, held in Guangdong, China.Then the United States began to feel the power of Title IX. In 1996, women’s soccer debuted at the Olympics in Atlanta, and the United States won gold. During the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, against China, the Americans secured a victory during penalty kicks before a capacity crowd of more than 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.Michelle Akers, the pillar of the U.S.W.N.T. in the ’80s and ’90s who is now an assistant coach for the Orlando Pride women’s professional team, said Title IX was “game-changing.” “I can’t even understand the amount of time and energy and heartache that took to get that pushed through, and not just pushing it through but enforcing it — making it real for people, and making it real for me,” she said.The national team’s success continued, with a record four World Cup titles and four Olympic golds. And this year, after a six-year legal battle, a multimillion-dollar settlement and eventual labor agreement established equal pay for players representing the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams when competing internationally.“It was a historic moment, not just for soccer, but for sport,” Cindy Parlow Cone, U.S. Soccer’s president, said.The U.S. women’s national team celebrating its World Cup win in 2019 after a parade in Manhattan.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesSydney Sharts, left, and her sister Hannah, right, are college players. Their mother, Michelle, was on a club team in the ’90s.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesIn 1993, Michele Sharts was part of a club team at U.C.L.A. that threatened to sue the school under Title IX for not sponsoring women’s soccer.Sharts, who was cut from the inaugural varsity squad, now has two daughters playing at large university programs. Hannah, 22, started at U.C.L.A. before transferring to Colorado, where she is a graduate student. Sydney, 20, began at Oklahoma before transferring to Kansas State for the coming season.Hannah Sharts has played in front of as many as 5,000 fans. “Being able to gradually see more and more fans fill up the stands throughout my college experience has been very promising,” Hannah Sharts said. Both Hannah and Sydney have dreams to play professionally.Like the Sharts sisters, Volza, the rising senior in New Mexico, plans to play in college. She is looking at Division II and III schools with strong engineering programs.But first, she has her final year of high school ahead. Volza said she wanted to be a leader for the younger players.“I want to motivate them and teach them what it’s like to play varsity soccer for a state-winning championship team,” Volza said.And Volza wants to make history again in her own corner of America, by leading her team to win the Metro tournament and state championship in back-to-back years.Members of the De Anza Force celebrating a win over World Class F.C. in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York Times More

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      U.S. Soccer and Players Guarantee Equal Pay in New Contracts

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      Landmark labor agreements with members of the men’s and women’s national teams will include higher paychecks and shared World Cup prize money.As the women’s soccer stars stared at their laptop screens Monday night and the new labor deal was explained to them, the numbers just kept climbing. A few thousand dollars here. Tens of thousands of dollars there. Pretty soon, the figures had crossed into the millions.What they added up to, the players all knew, was something many of them had chased for most of their careers: equal pay.That reality arrived Wednesday in landmark contracts with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will guarantee, for the first time, that soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions.In addition to equal rates of pay for individual matches, the deals include a provision, believed to be the first of its kind, through which the teams will pool the unequal prize money payments U.S. Soccer receives from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, for their participation in the quadrennial World Cup. Starting with the 2022 men’s tournament and the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that money will be shared equally among the members of both teams.“No other country has ever done this,” U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Cone, said of the deal to equalize World Cup payments. “I think everyone should be really proud of what we’ve accomplished here. It really, truly, is historic.”U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, a former national team player who helped guide the national teams to a deal, with President Biden at an Equal Pay Day event in March.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe agreements were reached just over six years after a group of stars from the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national team began a campaign to overcome what they said was years of wage discrimination by U.S. Soccer against its female players. The players argued that they had been paid less than their male counterparts for decades even as they won world championships and Olympic gold medals.The fight over per diems and paychecks eventually morphed into a federal lawsuit in which the women accused U.S. Soccer of “institutionalized gender discrimination.” While the women lost in federal court in 2020, when a judge ruled against their core claims, they eventually won their equal pay victory at the negotiating table, with a final assist from the men’s team.It was the men’s team’s players, in fact, who opened a pathway to a deal late last year when they privately agreed to share some of the millions of dollars in World Cup bonus money that they have traditionally received by pooling it with the smaller payments the women receive from their own championship.That split could see the two teams pool, and share, $20 million or more as soon as next year. That will be in addition to match payments that are expected to average $450,000 a year — and double that, or more, in years when World Cup bonus money is added.For the women’s team’s players, Wednesday’s agreements were as much a relief as a triumph. Becky Sauerbrunn, one of the five players who signed the original complaint in 2016, admitted, “It’s hard to get so, so excited about something we should have had all along.”Through the years, as the sides battled in courtrooms and negotiating sessions, the dispute produced sometimes caustic — and personal — disagreements about personal privacy, workplace equality and basic fairness, and drew support (and second-guessing) from a disparate chorus of presidential candidates, star athletes and Hollywood celebrities — not all of them supportive of the women’s campaign for pay equity.The difference in compensation for men and women has been one of the most contentious issues in soccer in recent years, particularly after the American women won consecutive World Cup championships, in 2015 and 2019, and the men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Over the years, the women’s team, which includes some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, had escalated and amplified its fight in court filings, news media interviews and on the sport’s grandest stages.The dispute had always been a complex issue, with differing contracts, unequal prize money and other financial quirks muddying the distinctions in pay between the men’s and women’s teams and complicating the ability of national governing bodies like U.S. Soccer to resolve the differences.Yet the federation ultimately committed to a fairer system. To achieve it, U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements. These agreements will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year from sponsors, broadcasters and other partners.The U.S. women’s soccer team amplified its equal pay message on the way to winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesLabor peace will be expensive: U.S. Soccer has committed to single-game payments for most matches of $18,000 per player for games won, and as much as $24,000 per game for wins at certain major tournaments — cementing the status of the U.S. men and women as two of the highest-paid national teams in the world. And the federation will surrender to the men and women on those teams 90 percent of the money it receives from FIFA for sending teams to the next two World Cups.The split of prize money, then, is a notable concession by the American men, who have previously been awarded the bulk of those multimillion-dollar payments by U.S. Soccer, and a potential seven-figure windfall for the women. The 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, for example, competed for a prize pool of $30 million; the 32 men’s teams that will compete in Qatar in November will split $450 million.Timeline: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Fight for Equal PayCard 1 of 11A six-year legal battle. More

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      Angel City F.C. and the N.W.S.L.’s Ongoing Search for Itself

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      LOS ANGELES — Angel City F.C., one of two new franchises in the National Women’s Soccer League, arrived for its first season equipped with dozens of celebrity investors, sleek branding, copious media coverage and a well-choreographed social media campaign.What it did not have, at least consistently, was a place to play soccer.Early this year, just as Angel City’s players began arriving in Los Angeles for the team’s inaugural season, an agreement the team had made to use the Los Angeles Rams’ practice fields at California Lutheran University was put on hold. The issue? The N.F.L. team was on a Super Bowl run and still using them.Adjusting on the fly, Angel City arranged to spend the first few weeks of its preseason at Pepperdine University. But just as the players were to return to Cal Lutheran, team officials decided the school’s turf football field they had been given wasn’t adequate. They canceled training, and the players were offered a spa day instead.“Every start-up has to adjust and pivot: I’m comfortable with those last-minute changes. Having said that, we have 24 players and a coaching staff of 20, and it’s not as easy for them,” said Julie Uhrman, Angel City’s president and one of its founders, adding, “Sometimes we fall short of delivering for the players, and it’s devastating.”Missteps for a new team aren’t surprising. But to veterans of the N.W.S.L., Angel City’s early problems — not only its field issues, but also the idea that professional athletes would prefer a spa day to a rigorous practice only weeks before their first game — were concerning signs of how far even the league’s best-funded teams still need to go.Katie Johnson of the San Diego Wave, left, and Jasmyne Spencer of Angel City F.C. Both teams are new to the N.W.S.L. this season.Meg Oliphant/Getty Images“That’s exactly what I mean when I talk about operational rigor,” Jessica Berman, the new N.W.S.L. commissioner, said when asked about her immediate priorities. “It is the sort of stuff behind the curtain — how the sausage gets made — that really paves the way for the league’s growth. The commercialization and the revenue will flow from creating an infrastructure within the league that is consistent, professionalized, credible, reliable.”Yet as the league opens its 10th regular season this weekend, Angel City’s stumbles on the basics, after a year in which the N.W.S.L. was rocked by claims of player mistreatment, have many around the league once again asking:What is the N.W.S.L.? And what does it want to be?A player-led push for change“Enough is enough,” one veteran player said of the mind-set that saw N.W.S.L. pros take a more active role in the direction of their league.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe arrival of Angel City, along with a second new franchise in San Diego, was expected to offer a fresh start for the N.W.S.L. after a very public reckoning last year. In a matter of months, five of the league’s 10 head coaches were fired or resigned for off-field conduct, including one who was accused of coercing a player to have sex with him. (Yet another coach, James Clarkson of the Houston Dash, was suspended on Tuesday over unspecified findings in a continuing review of “current and historic complaints of discrimination, harassment and abuse.”)The scandals were an existential moment for the league. Its commissioner, criticized for mishandling reports of coaches abusing and bullying players, resigned. Team owners faced hard questions about their own failings. Even some of the league’s most devoted fans turned on their teams, demanding answers and accountability.The players took it a step further: For one remarkable week, they refused to play at all.Veteran players said the show of player power was not new. Things had been changing, they said, since the league’s early years, when sponsors came in the form of family-run meatpacking businesses, broadcast deals were next to nonexistent and players were reluctant to ask for more.“Keeping everything quiet, dealing with it, sucking it up because we just need to make progress and we don’t want to do anything that could hurt the league,” Yael Averbuch West, the general manager of Gotham F.C. and a former player, said of the mind-set in the early years of the league. More

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      The Female Soccer Players Challenging France’s Hijab Ban

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      SARCELLES, France — Every time Mama Diakité heads to soccer game, her stomach is in knots.It happened again on a recent Saturday afternoon in Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris. Her amateur team had come to face the local club, and Diakité, a 23-year-old Muslim midfielder, feared she would not be allowed to play in her hijab.This time, the referee let her in. “It worked,” she said at the end of the game, leaning against the fence bordering the field, her smiling face wrapped in a black Nike head scarf.But Diakité had only fallen through the cracks.For years, France’s soccer federation has banned players participating in competitions from wearing conspicuous religious symbols such as hijabs, a rule it contends is in keeping with the organization’s strict secular values. Although the ban is loosely enforced at the amateur level, it has hung over Muslim women’s players for years, shattering their hopes of professional careers and driving some away from the game altogether.Les Hijabeuses is an informal group of hijab-wearing women who play soccer together in an effort to draw attention to a French policy they say drives Muslim women out of the game.In an ever more multicultural France, where women’s soccer is booming, the ban has also sparked a growing backlash. At the forefront of the fight is Les Hijabeuses, a group of young hijab-wearing soccer players from different teams who have joined forces to campaign against what they describe as a discriminatory rule that excludes Muslim women from sports.Their activism has touched a nerve in France, reviving heated debates on the integration of Muslims in a country with a tortured relationship with Islam, and highlighting the struggle of French sports authorities to reconcile their defense of strict secular values with growing calls for greater representation on the field.“What we want is to be accepted as we are, to implement these grand slogans of diversity, inclusiveness,” said Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses, which has 80 members. “Our only desire is to play soccer.”The Hijabeuses collective was created in 2020 with the help of researchers and community organizers in an attempt to solve a paradox: Although French laws and FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, allow sportswomen to play in hijabs, France’s soccer federation prohibits it, arguing that it would break with the principle of religious neutrality on the field.Supporters of the ban say hijabs portend an Islamist radicalization taking over sports. But the personal stories of Hijabeuses members emphasize how soccer has been synonymous with emancipation — and how the ban continues to feel like a step backward.Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses.Diakité began playing soccer at age 12, initially hiding it from her parents, who saw soccer as a boys’ sport. “I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” she said, calling it “a dream.”Jean-Claude Njehoya, her current coach, said that “when she was younger, she had a lot of skills” that could have propelled her to the highest level. But “from the moment” she understood the hijab ban would impact her, he said, “she didn’t really push herself further.”Diakité said she decided on her own to wear the hijab in 2018 — and to give up her dream. She now plays for a third-division club and plans to open a driving school. “No regret,” she said. “Either I’m accepted as I am, or I’m not. And that’s it.”Karthoum Dembele, a 19-year-old midfielder who wears a nose ring, also said she had to confront her mother to be allowed to play. She quickly joined a sports-intensive program in middle school and participated in club tryouts. But it wasn’t until she learned about the ban, four years ago, that she realized she may no longer be allowed to compete.“I had managed to make my mother give in and I’m told the federation won’t let me play,” Dembele said. “I told myself: What a joke!”Other members of the group recalled episodes when referees barred them from the field, prompting some, feeling humiliated, to quit soccer and turn to sports where hijabs are allowed or tolerated, like handball or futsal.Mama Diakité, who plays for Jeanne D’Arc Drancy, after a match in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris. Technically, Diakité is not allowed to play in a hijab, but referees often look the other way.Throughout last year, Les Hijabeuses lobbied the French soccer federation to overturn the ban. They sent letters, met with officials and even staged a protest at the federation’s headquarters — to no avail. The federation declined to comment for this article.Paradoxically, it was Les Hijabeuses’ staunchest opponents who finally put them in the spotlight.In January, a group of conservative senators tried to enshrine the soccer federation’s hijab ban in law, arguing that hijabs threatened to spread radical Islam in sports clubs. The move reflected a lingering malaise in France regarding the Muslim veil, which regularly stirs controversy. In 2019, a French store dropped a plan to sell a hijab designed for runners after a barrage of criticism.Energized by the senators’ efforts, Les Hijabeuses waged an intense lobbying campaign against the amendment. Making the most of their strong social media presence — the group has nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram — they launched a petition that gathered more than 70,000 signatures; rallied dozens of sport celebrities to their cause; and organized games before the Senate building and with professional athletes.Vikash Dhorasoo, a former France midfielder who attended a game, said the ban left him dumbfounded. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “It’s the Muslims who are targeted here.”Members of Les Hijabeuses meet regularly with Diawara (in pink sweater and black hijab) and supporters like the sociologist Haifa Tlili, left, who have offered help in their fight against France’s soccer federation. Stéphane Piednoir, the senator behind the amendment, denied the accusation that the legislation was aimed at Muslims specifically, saying its focus was all conspicuous religious signs. But he acknowledged that the amendment had been motivated by the wearing of the Muslim veil, which he called “a propaganda vehicle” for political Islam and a form of “visual proselytizing.” (Piednoir also has condemned the display of the Catholic tattoos of the P.S.G. star Neymar as “unfortunate” and wondered if the religious ban should extend to them.)The amendment was eventually rejected by the government’s majority in parliament, although not without frictions. The Paris police banned a protest organized by Les Hijabeuses, and the French sports minister, who said the law allows hijab-wearing women to play, clashed with government colleagues opposing the head scarf.The Hijabeuses’ fight may not be a popular one in France, where six in 10 people support banning hijabs in the street, according to a recent survey by the polling firm CSA. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate who will face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff vote on April 24 — with a shot at a final victory — has said that if elected, she will ban the Muslim veil in public spaces.But, on the soccer field, everyone seems to agree that hijabs should be allowed.“Nobody minds if they play with it,” said Rana Kenar, 17, a Sarcelles player who had come to watch her team face Diakité’s club on a bitterly cold February evening.Kenar was sitting in the bleachers with about 20 fellow players. All said they saw the ban as a form of discrimination, noting that, at the amateur level, the ban was loosely enforced.Even the referee of the game in Sarcelles, who had let Diakité play, seemed at odds with the ban. “I looked the other away,” he said, declining to give his name for fear of repercussions.Les Hijabeuses held a celebrity game in February that drew athletes, actors and other supporters who oppose the hijab ban.Pierre Samsonoff, the former deputy head of the soccer federation’s amateur branch, said the issue would inevitably come up again in the coming years, with the development of women’s soccer and the hosting of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, which will feature veiled athletes from Muslim countries.Samsonoff, who initially defended banning the hijab, said he had since softened his stance, acknowledging the policy could end up ostracizing Muslim players. “The issue is whether we are not creating worse consequences by deciding to ban it on the fields than by deciding to allow it,” he said.Piednoir, the senator, said the players were ostracizing themselves. But he acknowledged never having spoken with any hijab-wearing athletes to hear their motivations, comparing the situation to “firefighters” being asked to go “listen to pyromaniacs.”Dembele, who manages the Hijabeuses’ social media accounts, said she was often struck by the violence of online comments and the fierce political opposition.“We hold on,” she said. “It’s not just for us, it’s also for the young girls who tomorrow will be able to dream of playing for France, for P.S.G.”Monique Jaques More

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      The USWNT vs. U.S. Soccer: an Equal Pay Timeline

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      A six-year legal fight that saw victories on the field and losses in federal court ended with a multimillion-dollar settlement. Here’s how the sides got here.A settlement announced on Tuesday abruptly ended a six-year legal fight between dozens of members of the United States women’s national team and U.S. Soccer, an often bitter and contentious dispute that had placed some of the world’s most popular and high-profile athletes at the forefront of the fight for equal pay for women.What was the fight about? That was complicated from the start. A simple slogan — equal pay — faded into shades of gray upon deeper review of different contracts, different schedules and different values placed on women’s soccer by the sport’s global leadership and its U.S. federation.The timeline of the fight, which started with a wage discrimination complaint filed by five top players in March 2016, is much more easily explained. That single filing set off years of twists and turns, court arguments and public statements, hard feelings, hard-won victories and at least one humbling defeat for the athletes.Here’s a review of how we got from the initial complaint to this settlement, told through reporting by The New York Times.March 2016: The shot across the bow.Hope Solo at the Rio Olympics in 2016. An original complainant but long retired from the team, she continues to wage her own separate equal pay fight against U.S. Soccer.Eugenio Savio/Associated PressThe equal pay fight began with five star players and a claim of wage discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency that enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination.“The numbers speak for themselves,” said goalkeeper Hope Solo, one of the players who signed the complaint. Solo said the men’s players “get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”Solo was joined in the complaint by the co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, forward Alex Morgan and midfielder Megan Rapinoe. As The Times noted that day:In their complaint, the five players cited recent U.S. Soccer financial reports as proof that they have become the federation’s main economic engine even as, they said, they often earned only half as much — or less — than their male counterparts.At the same time, the players said, they exceeded revenue projections by as much as $16 million in 2015, when their World Cup triumph set television viewership records and a nine-game victory tour in packed stadiums produced record gate receipts and attendance figures.Wounded by the accusation they were treating the women’s players unfairly, U.S. Soccer — which had for years been a global leader in advancing women’s soccer — pushed back forcefully by citing figures that it said showed the men’s national team produced revenue and attendance about double that of the women’s team, and television ratings that were “a multiple” of what the women attracted. The federation accused the players and their lawyers of cherry-picking figures from an extraordinarily successful year for the women — they had won the World Cup in 2015 — and a U.S. Soccer spokesman called their math “inaccurate, misleading or both.”Offended by the suggestion that their games, and their successes, were worth less to the federation than those of the men’s team, the women and their teammates dug in for a fight.Few knew then how long it would last.Early 2017: An education and a new contract.Becky Sauerbrunn in a match against France in 2017.Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire, via Getty ImagesWithin a year, the players had taken control of their collective fate, firing their union chief and reorganizing their players’ association in ways that gave them a more active role in the issues affecting them.“It was always the plan,” Sauerbrunn, the team captain, said at the time, “to have a players’ association that listens to all the voices of its members and then can take that, and elevate that, and try to make that a reality.”Receiving a high-speed education in topics like labor law and public relations, the players voted one another onto negotiating teams and subcommittees and — between camps and full-time jobs as professional athletes — threw themselves into the task of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer.Uniting disparate teammates through text messages, overnight emails and anonymous player surveys, they determined priorities for a new contract and then made their cases personally in negotiating sessions with the federation and its lawyers.Within a few months, they had a deal.The agreement includes a sizable increase in base pay for the players — more than 30 percent, initially — and improved match bonuses that could double some of their incomes, to $200,000 to $300,000 in any given year, and even more in a year that includes a World Cup or Olympic campaign.The agreement largely sidestepped the broader equal pay fight that the women had made the cornerstone of their cause. The players were able to not only take pride in gains on salaries and bonuses, but also in having won control over some licensing and marketing rights that the union saw as an opening to test the team’s value on the open market.March 2019: Same fight, new forum.Labor peace did little to move the sides closer to an equal pay agreement, so in March 2019 the players withdrew their E.E.O.C. complaint and significantly raised the stakes by suing U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination.In their filing and a statement released by the team, the 28 players described “institutionalized gender discrimination” that they say has existed for years.The discrimination, the athletes said, affects not only their paychecks but also where they play and how often, how they train, the medical treatment and coaching they receive, and even how they travel to matches.The suit brought the fight to a new forum but also presented new hurdles. The players now not only had to prove that their team and the men’s national team did the same work, they also had to overcome questions about the differences in their pay structures and their negotiated collective bargaining agreements. And the C.B.A. they fought so hard to win suddenly left them without one bit of leverage: The players were forbidden by its terms to strike at least until it expired at the end of 2021.July 2019: Stadium chants and parade taunts.Fans cheered at a parade for the U.S. women’s team as they celebrated their World Cup victory in 2019.Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn the summer of 2019, a fight that had played out in public statements, social media hashtags and white T-shirts for more than three years moved to its biggest stage to date: the Women’s World Cup in France.By then, the U.S. national team’s stars were fighting not only their federation and others opposed to their equal pay claims, but also a sitting U.S. president, critics of their victory margins and those who didn’t appreciate their goal celebrations. When it lifted the trophy, though, all the team had was friends.The chant was faint at first, bubbling up from the northern stands inside the Stade de Lyon. Gradually it grew louder. Soon it was deafening.“Equal pay!” it went, over and over, until thousands were joining in, filling the stadium with noise. “Equal pay! Equal pay!”A few days later, fans repeated the chant as the U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro feted the team after its victory parade in New York.February 2020: The price of peace? $67 million.Among the voluminous filings before the women’s case was heard in federal court last year were two notable ones seeking to end it outright.In separate requests for summary judgment — the process in which each side claims its case is so strong that the judge should rule in its favor — U.S. Soccer and the players showed just how far apart the players and the federation remained not only in what they considered a fair outcome, but also in their basic concepts of what constituted equal pay, despite years of litigation, depositions and public relations campaigns.U.S. Soccer asked for a simple declaration that the players’ claims were without merit; simultaneously, the players finally put a price tag on what they considered a fair outcome:The federation sought to avoid a looming gender discrimination trial by asking the judge to dismiss the players’ claim. The women’s players also asked for a pretrial decision, but on far different terms: They are seeking almost $67 million — and potentially millions more — in back pay and damages.March 2020: The fight gets ugly.While Rapinoe had offered an olive branch at the victory parade, hinting at the idea of a settlement on points on which the two sides agreed, that hope was gone months later.The spark was a court filing in which U.S. Soccer, through its lawyers, argued that “indisputable science” proved that the players on its World Cup-winning women’s national team were inferior to men.Carlos Cordeiro resigned after U.S. Soccer argued through its lawyers that women’s players were inferior to their men’s counterparts.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press“I know that we’re in a contentious fight,” Rapinoe said, “but that crossed a line completely.”U.S. Soccer fired its lawyers, but the damage was done. After unsuccessfully trying to manage the fallout, Cordeiro resigned. Talks of a settlement that might have headed off the march to federal court fell apart.April 2020: A crushing defeat for the players.The ruling in the lawsuit, when it came, was devastating for the players. The judge, R. Gary Klausner of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, granted the federation’s motion for summary judgment. But he went further: He declared that the women’s core argument — that they had been paid less than players on the men’s national team — was factually wrong.In his ruling, the judge dismissed the players’ arguments that they were systematically underpaid by U.S. Soccer in comparison with the men’s national team. In fact, Klausner wrote, U.S. Soccer had substantiated its argument that the women’s team had actually earned more “on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis” than the men’s team during the years at issue in the lawsuit.The brutal irony, of course, was that in going to court against U.S. Soccer while they were at the peak of their powers, the women’s team had also picked the absolute worst time to line up a few years of their salaries against a few years of the men’s pay.Since February 2015, the agreed-upon start of the class-action period in the case, the women’s team had won two World Cup titles (and millions in bonus payments for those triumphs) and other major salary gains by negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. During the same period, the men’s team had plumbed new lows, with its failures serving to cripple the women’s case.By failing to qualify for the only men’s World Cup played during the class window, the men became ineligible for millions of dollars in performance bonuses of their own. Those payments would have swelled their paydays from U.S. Soccer far beyond what the women could ever have earned.A chance to salvage something from defeat?It was, a day later, hard to overstate the weight of the court decision. Judge Klausner had not only ruled against the players’ arguments; in effect, he had said they could never win. Yet even though U.S. Soccer’s victory in court was complete, and the players immediately announced their intention to appeal, the federation signaled just as quickly that it was still happy to discuss a way out.“We look forward to working with the women’s national team to chart a positive path forward to grow the game both here at home and around the world,” it said in the briefest of statements after the ruling.Cindy Parlow Cone, who replaced Cordeiro as president of U.S. Soccer, signaled a willingness to continue negotiations with the players.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe federation’s words seemed carefully chosen. The seemingly endless battles with its most popular players have unquestionably damaged — and continue to damage — U.S. Soccer’s reputation. The dispute has even brought it into conflict with its own sponsors.But much has changed since the equal pay war began: U.S. Soccer has a new president, the former women’s player Cindy Cone, and a new chief executive, and neither of them could reasonably be tied to past missteps and injustices.For them, and for U.S. Soccer, rebuilding a functional relationship with the women’s team — the federation’s most valuable asset and a critical moneymaker in troubled economic times — should be a top priority. If that means eating some crow and cutting a check to signal an eagerness to move forward, it might even work.November 2021: A small victory, and a new start.In November of last year, U.S. Soccer and the players reached an agreement that resolved claims about unequal working conditions. The deal, a rare moment of détente in the yearslong fight, formalized an effort the federation had already begun to remove differences in areas like staffing, travel, hotel accommodations and venue choices related to men’s and women’s national team matches. But it was a necessary step for the players before they could appeal their larger defeat in federal court.For the players and their lawyers, the agreement brings opportunity: In settling their issues related to working conditions, the women’s stars cleared the way to appealing a judge’s decision in May that had rejected most of their equal pay claims. For the federation, removing one of the last unresolved items in the team’s wage-discrimination lawsuit allowed its new leadership team to rid itself of one more point of contention in a dispute they would prefer to see end, and to signal that U.S. Soccer is open to more accommodations.U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, hailed the agreement, saying it signaled the federation’s efforts “to find a new way forward” with the women’s team and, hopefully, a way out of the rest of the litigation.“This settlement is good news for everyone,” Cone said, “and I believe will serve as a springboard for continued progress.”Tuesday: The fight ends at last.Tuesday’s settlement between the women’s players and U.S. Soccer includes $24 million in compensation for the athletes — largely back pay for dozens of players who were included once the plaintiffs were granted class-action status, and several million dollars in seed money for a fund that will be available to players for post-career plans and initiatives to grow the women’s game.It also includes a pledge from U.S. Soccer to equalize pay, appearance fees and match bonuses for the women’s and men’s national teams for all games, including the World Cup, in the teams’ next collective bargaining agreements.That last bit is the stage for the next fight: Both the men’s and women’s teams are playing under expired — and separate — agreements. Negotiations on new ones are ongoing. It’s not clear when a deal will be struck. More