Sounder women debut in Spokane

The area's young female soccer players have been waiting to admire them. And now they've arrived.

The area's best women players have a place to shine with the formation of the Seattle Sounders Select Women's team, which plays its inaugural game at 4 p.m. tomorrow against the Spokane Chill at Joe Albi Stadium.

"The young girls of today are starving for role models, especially in soccer, so this is a great opportunity," said Sounders Select defender Christina Harsaghy, speaking for the new team yesterday at media day at Memorial Stadium. "The WNBA is great, but right now there's really only role models in golf and tennis."

Harsaghy said women's soccer is evolving.

"In women's college soccer 10 years ago, a scholarship was hard to get," she said. "But not now. We need to evolve and move into the next level, which is professional soccer."

The Select team is a provisional member of the Pacific Northwest Division of the W-League, a part of the United Soccer Leagues. It is one of seven teams affiliated with the Sounders in their new European club concept.

Division rivals are the Chill, the Vancouver Lady Sixers and Portland Rain.

"This is an absolute breakthrough for women's soccer in Seattle," said Tor Taylor, who owns the Sounders along with Neil Farnsworth and Scott Oki.

"There's a large number of talented players around here, and this gives them a place to play," said Chance Fry, coach of the Sounders Select Women. "People are going to enjoy watching these young ladies play."

The women on the Select team have been training together since mid-March. They will play an 11-game schedule in their inaugural season, including five doubleheaders with the men's team at Memorial Stadium.

"We are basically the pioneers," said Harsaghy, 28, a 1989 graduate of Everett's Cascade High. She played professionally in Germany and Sweden for five years after graduating from the University of Portland in 1993.

"It has to catch on," she said. "The women's World Cup win (in 1999) brought the sport into the public's eye, and we can build on that.

"We can't move mountains overnight."

The women open their home schedule against the Lady Sixers on July 29. They also host the Rain (Aug. 6) and Lady Sixers again (Aug. 12) in division games and the Vancouver Angels (Aug. 18) and Bellingham Marlins (Aug. 26) in nonleague matches at Memorial. The Sounders Select Women's team intends to join the W-League as a full-fledged member in 2001.

Men's team to face Galaxy

The A-League Sounders men's team drew the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer for their first game of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup tournament Wednesday at Cal-State Fullerton. Kickoff for the round-of-32 game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.

The Open Cup dates back to 1914. It's the oldest cup competition in American soccer. The winner receives $100,000, and the runner-up is awarded $50,000.

Notes

-- Next up: The next Sounder game is an exhibition contest at 7 p.m. tomorrow against the Spokane Shadow (PDL) in Spokane.

-- TV time: The Sounders will have two more games televised live on KONG-TV. The next broadcast is at 7:35 p.m. June 23 when the Sounders visit the Rochester Raging Rhinos.

The last TV broadcast will be the regular-season finale at the Vancouver 86ers on Sept. 4, at 7 p.m.