LPF on The Huffington Post:
Girl Power
Posted: 7/26/11 01:44 PM ET
On Sunday July 17, Tommy Knockers Pub in Idaho Springs, Colorado, looked like any other sports bar on a weekend afternoon. Many men and some women sat around tables and at the countertop, diving into heaps of nachos and licking buffalo sauce off their fingers. Seventeen televisions playing seventeen different channels decorated the perimeter of the ceiling, and at least five were broadcasting the Rockies game that had begun a few minutes earlier. But at the moment my friends and I walked in, something looked odd. With all of those people in the room, taps being pulled, dishes clanking and children playing, the place was eerily quiet and everyone sat staring at one TV only -- that which was playing the Women's World Cup Final.
We had just missed the finish, and as we entered the bar, looks of shock and bewilderment turned into exclamations of "Can you believe it, we lost!" and "It was down to PKs, amazing!" and "That was one of the best sporting events I have ever seen!" Now, I am no sports fanatic. However, I have spent enough time watching American sports in American bars, and probably even more time watching soccer in bars across the rest of the world, to know that if those walls could talk they would be saying, "Huh? Soccer? Women? What?"
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