This USWNT World Cup roster is the most racially diverse in the team’s history for a big tournament

Four years ago, watching Megan Rapinoe’s World Cup victory speech made me think of two young girls. One was myself, a soccer fanatic who thought the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) was absolutely everything. The other was a young fan I encountered while working a game in 2013.

In her speech that day, Rapinoe remarked, “Yes, we play sports. Yes, we play soccer. Yes, we’re female athletes, but we are so much more than that. You are so much more than that.”

Now, as we are on the cusp of another World Cup, I am thinking of all the kids — and adults, too — who may see themselves on this particular version of the USWNT roster.

A roster that is the most racially diverse in the team’s history for a major tournament.

Seven Black players (18-year-old phenom Alyssa Thompson is also Filipino and Peruvian) and two Mexican Americans made the squad headed to Australia and New Zealand this summer. This is an increase from the 2019 World Cup roster, which featured five Black players, and the 2020 Olympic team, which had six. Additionally, Sofia Huerta and Ashley Sanchez are just the second and third Mexican Americans to ever appear on a roster for either major tournament, joining Stephanie Cox, who first did so in 2008.

There are also three LGBTQ members competing for Team USA.

This iteration of the national team is young (14 individuals are playing in their first World Cup), Black, and queer — a significant fact for a team that has only had nine out LGBTQ players and 19 players of color appear on a roster for a World Cup or Olympics in its 30-year history.

Once the team hits the field in July, 24 players of color will have suited up for Team USA in these high-profile tournaments — 26 if you include Huerta and Sanchez.

If you don’t think that matters, you probably aren’t a person of color or a member of the LGBTQ community.

And it matters especially now, as this roster and this team are existing in the same space where systematically marginalized and underrepresented groups are under attack all across this nation.

In 2023, there have been more anti-LGBTQ bills enacted than any other year on record, and a recent report found that American adult support of same-sex relationships has dropped. Antisemitism is on the rise, with neo-Nazis convening all over the country, including at the entrance to Disney World. There are also movements to erase Black history and books from the classroom, as well as an overarching feeling in some spheres that diversity, equity, and inclusion are dirty words.

These conversations haven’t escaped sports, with racism and homophobia still ever present in soccer, both domestically and globally.

While the visibility of these Black and queer players on the field for Team USA may not do much to tangibly impact either of these conversations, it will undoubtedly help others see themselves — to see potential and possibility — on the game’s brightest stage.

That potential and possibility will be present every time Lynn Williams, Sophia Smith, and Trinity Rodman carve through defenders or put one in the back of the net. It will also be there as Crystal Dunn dominates at left back, even though she’s playing out of position, or in the new center back pairing of Alana Cook and Naomi Girma.

And it will be present in Kristie Mewis making her first World Cup roster at the age of 32 for a tournament hosted by the home nation of her girlfriend, Australian superstar Sam Kerr, as well as in Kelley O’Hara playing in her fourth World Cup, and her first since coming out by kissing her then-girlfriend, now fiancée, after winning the whole thing last time around.

Yes, Williams, Smith, Rodman, Dunn, Mewis, and O’Hara are all soccer players. But they are also, to borrow a phrase from Rapinoe, “so much more than that.”

I fell in love with the game of soccer before I fell in love with the USWNT, falling for both for a multitude of reasons. One such reason was that the women on the team looked like and reminded me of me, my friends, my family, and my teammates. Seeing them celebrated in 1999 changed my life.

The 2023 version of the squad has the potential — the possibility — to do the exact same thing for a whole new group of people.

Kate Harman is a member of the communication studies department at Rowan University, where she helped develop the sports communication and media program.