“And to all the cynics, we’re going to make the world better for you anyway.”

— Nike

When Brandi Chastain scored the winning goal for the USA in the 1999 Women’s World Cup, I was in awe. I was 8 years old. I had started playing soccer, the sport known to the rest of the world as football, when I was 5 years old. This game, unbeknownst to me at the time, was my 1st love.

Shortly after the Women’s World Cup ended so dramatically, I found myself playing in a game in my suburban hometown in Northern California on my birthday weekend. We were winning.

In a dramatic display of little girl swagger and passion, I ripped off my jersey after scoring a goal, revealing my one-piece Speedo bathing suit and non-boobs underneath. With little explanation, because this was, at heart, a small and peaceful gesture merely suggesting my obviously superior skills (any soccer player would understand), I got yellow-carded for it.

All of my childish dreams of goal-scoring glory were incinerated. This was absolutely the worst crime that had ever been committed against me, on my birthday weekend no less, in my young and sheltered life. I became so furious that I immediately committed enough fouls to get my little chubby self red-carded out of the game.

That same year, I got a t-shirt with the 1998 Women’s World Cup logo. I wore it throughout my childhood and well into my 20's. It might still be at my parent’s house. It stood as a memento for me, even when I was lucky enough to meet Brandi herself at Stanford during a summer scouting camp my parents supported me through in high school. Sadly though, high school was where my serious dedication to soccer ended, roughly around 2008.

Flash forward to 2014. This summer, for whatever reason, as I was watching the 2014 World Cup, I was reminded of that moment, that feeling of pure passion and glory. I was reminded of the little girl I used to be and the woman I have become.

I was reminded that before travel, and writing, entrepreneurship and technology… and er, French men… soccer was… who I was. Soccer was everything. It got me wondering what kind of soccer mom I might be, since that’s arguably my only role left to play in the sport.

And that got me really depressed. It got me thinking about all my “lost potential” my Dad had always lectured me about after games, when I left myself, my family, and my teammates disappointed. I don’t really know what happened to me in high school; it was some combination of burnout and depression. Not in my whole life, just in the way I felt about the sport. Something psychologically turned off for me.

All my coaches had always told me I had what it took. In my heart, I knew I had it. At 5'8'’ and ~155 pounds, I was built for it. I was fast, yet still agile in a way bigger players tend not to be and I had great technical skills with the ball. Being a naturally passionate crazy person, I could get aggressive in the ways that are necessary to play really competitively.

It’s understandable now, looking back, that 12 years of repetitive play with no real breaks would lead to boredom, laziness, and a bit of resentment. I gave so much of myself to this sport already, was it really going to pay off to give 4 more years through college? What was I looking forward to? What achievement, exactly, did I have in mind?

A full ride would’ve been nice. But I was smart, too. At the time, I didn’t want to sacrifice the quality of my education to go to a state school to play, as my friend’s were (at the time college rankings actually meant something to me). Some of those friends have gone on now to receive professional offers, which I guess is the dream.

But I still don’t feel that it is the dream. I think one of the reasons I disappeared as a player, and eventually quit like so many others… was that there was no dream. This underlying disappointment in myself about soccer, my only real regret in life, still fuels me in my pursuit of tech entrepreneurship today. I have to prove my value.

It got me wondering, most importantly: in what kind of world will my future children be learning to play this game? If sport is a metaphor for life, as I have always been coached to believe, what will their life look like? If sports are both an educational and career opportunity, will my future daughter and son have equal chance to pursue their dreams?

Here’s the 5 things that have preoccupied my mind since.

1. This year, there seemed to be a lot of debate about the meaning of nationality in an increasingly globalized world. Can you field a nearly whole team of French-born players and call them the Algerian national squad?

Better question I never saw raised: can you field a squad entirely composed of men, with the suggestion that they represent their entire country, in 2014?

Of course you can. We do. But we already learned this the hard way, didn’t we? Having one official, no description necessary World Cup and the other “Women’s” World Cup reminds me of the “separate but equal” clauses of the early American civil rights movement. Of course they’ll never actually be equal. But this is how they are right now. Is that good enough in 2014?

We made a lot of progress in terms of race, I think, because there’s no scientific basis for race. Two black people may be more genetically different than a white person and a black person. Therefore it becomes completely ridiculous to believe that one person is better than another, at anything, because of the color of their skin. Gender isn’t like this. At least it isn’t right now. I’d argue we still believe that having a Y chromosome makes you a better athlete, regardless.

This mentality has byproducts that spill over into our schools and offices. I know in my industry, in tech, we’re sure scrambling to educate more women in STEM to fill the ever growing shortage of qualified employees to move us forward. This is attributed to a bunch of different factors related to gender, but the question remains: will it always take impending political and economic crisis to create change?

2. Any girl who has ever played a sport knows every man’s reaction to the idea that men and women might share the same pitch. Men are better at sports than women.

Needless to say, I don’t think that’s universally true. This is that genetic basis thing again. Men are naturally built to be faster and stronger, sure, but does that mean they actually are? Not all the time. I’m pretty confident Hope Solo can kick the shit out of almost all the men I know. So across the board, no, all men are not better at sports than all women.

And men don’t even beat women at all sports anyway. Thanks to BuzzFeed, it’s quick and easy Google search to find that women have outperformed men in the following sports: Equestrian, Tennis, Wrestling, Bowling, Racecar Driving, and Ultramarathon. And that’s probably not an exhaustive list.

Those aren’t “pussy” sports, gentlemen (there’s another reminder that we associate women with weakness). The 1st person to run 300 miles without sleeping is a woman by the name of Pamela Reed. Ye Shiwen swam faster than Ryan Lochte in the most recent Olympics. Can I get a witness? Does anyone realize this is happening?

Not to mention, Misty Copeland everyone.

As for soccer, the Women’s World Cup was invented in 1991. That means its a year younger than I am.

Therefore, I’d like to conclude we have insufficient evidence as to whether or not women can compete at an equal level with men. We haven’t really been able to play competitively that long. We also have been prevented from competing against men in most sports.

And I’m speaking from the perspective of a young, upper middle class American here. That means there’s at least billions of other girls and women who have been given less opportunity to train than me. At least billions of girls who might discover and train themselves to better than men at a variety of different sports, yet have probably never even played. This is so must lost potential, and frankly so much potential wealth lost as well.

3. This mentality we teach about gender and sports scares me because I think we’ve indadvertedly never taught boys and men to respect and admire, or otherwise value, women’s athletic ability. It’s always seen as weaker and “less than.” My fear is that we’ve raised boys not to aspire to do anything like a girl, therefore their entire experience of watching women’s sports is doomed.

The reason this is so sad for everyone is because professional sports is an industry. At the end of the day, it’s a business. If half the population doesn’t empathize or aspire to be like the athletic heroes in front of them, this is a big problem.

The U.S. women’s professional soccer league has already gone bankrupt twice. Thus, their strategy to remain solvent as a business this 3rd time around has made for some interesting results, which frankly aren’t that different from the salary gaps we see for men vs. women in other industries in America.

Men earn on average near $150,000 as professional soccer players in MLS, which also had a tough start in the U.S. in 1993 but has never gone bankrupt, while women in the new NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League, founded for the 3rd time in 2012) earn between $6,000 — $30,000 USD as professional players. Which is roughly somewhere in between what I made working part time as a restaurant hostess in high school and what I made driving a bus part time in college. So I was probably right to feel, around the age of 18, that my long term career opportunities were going downhill from there.

Even more shockingly, the entire 20 player roster of women can’t be paid in total more than $200,000 USD, as required by the league. This is clearly a desperate effort not to go bankrupt. So basically 20 women are making roughly the average salary of one man. What the fuck?!

David Beckham alone made $6.5 million per year playing for the LA Galaxy. On the other side, Megan Rapinoe, one of the best players on the current U.S. team and arguably one of the best female soccer players in the world, just said fuck it and went to France. She earns $14,000 USD per month there, which rivals what her male counterparts make in the United States.

So clearly this is an environmental problem, arguably an American problem, and not a human problem.

“Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Not to mention, on a global level, there were only 2 countries that bid to host the 2015 Women’s World Cup. And one was Zimbabwe. Considering they have never qualified for a Women’s or “Men’s” World Cup, experienced 11,200,000% inflation in 2008, and still use a 100 billion dollar note, that bid was basically never seen as realistic. So one country wanted to host.

If that isn’t the most disappointing statement about the world’s value of women’s athletics, and women in general, I don’t know what is.

When I imagine my 8 year old self totally in rapture at Brandi Chastain’s goal and celebration now, I wonder how many of my male peers did the same. I wonder what happened to me. I wonder how much more I had left and still have left at 23 years old, to contribute, that I don’t feel the world values right now. I’m unbelievably blessed to have been given the opportunity to play, and to be able to afford to travel within a competitive league for young girls. I think I tasted what it must feel like.

And maybe I did make the right decision at 18 years old to pursue other goals. I’m not sure if that choice will pay off in terms of my long term happiness, financial security, career success, and health. I like to think it did. But I will always have a nagging voice in the back of my head, reminding me of the glory I missed. When I travel and visit countries where it’s not acceptable for girls to play soccer, that voice will cry out. When I have the opportunity to invest in startups after success of mine, a familiar emerging industry will come to mind.

Luckily, I do have a beautiful, talented 17 year old little cousin going off on a full ride scholarship to the University of Hawaii this fall. I hope she feels more opportunity to pursue her dreams than I did. I hope she never quits, and if I ever have any chance to contribute to her long term career success in sports in a meaningful way, I hope to be able to do so.

The solution is merely a function of changing the way we think about women and sports in America and around the world. As a marketer, I know that it’s both complex and expensive to change how people think.

But I also know that when I fell in love with this game, it was already the world’s sport.

All I’m asking is if we can pay respect to more of the the amazing people who play it at a world class level.

For the love of the game.

“Go out and tell someone. There’s always somebody who wants to confiscate our humanity, and there are always stories that restore it. If we live out loud, we can trounce the hatred and expand everyone’s lives.” — Harvey Milk