Maybe Nickerson Field is cursed.
First, the Boston Braves bolted town for Milwaukee in 1953. The Boston Breakers of the doomed United States Football League only lasted a year at Nickerson in 1983 before heading south to New Orleans.
Then, the Boston University football team was cut in 1997.
After the field’s resurfacing in 2001, the Terrier field hockey team was forced to cross the river to compete on turf at Harvard University and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jack Barry Field.
After trying to overcome the fate of the USFL version, the Women’s United Soccer Association’s Boston Breakers are the latest emigrants from the field.
When the professional women’s soccer league suspended operations Monday, however, the fragile state of women’s professional sports comes to mind more than the ghosts who live somewhere between Harry Agganis Way and Babcock Street.
After struggling financially through three years of competition, the league’s Board of Governors voted to suspend play.
A decline in fan support from the league’s opening season, combined with a lack of revenue from corporate sponsorship, sealed the WUSA’s fate, league officials said. Poor television ratings also caused the league to lose its TV contract.
But BU women’s soccer coach Nancy Feldman said the league’s failure is not a reflection of the state of women’s sports, but rather the nature of professional sports in general.
‘I think we all are missing out,’ Feldman said. ‘Not just girls and women, but quite honestly, in my opinion, men. I think [the WUSA] is a fresh look at what professional sports can be, with all that is wrong with professional sports.
‘[The players] were more on our level than the multi-millionaire, high-profile athletes that are currently in professional sports,’ she continued.
Feldman also said the league’s suspension will not affect participation in women’s sports, which is at a high and continues to grow. However, young female athletes will lose a group of role models.
‘I don’t think it hurt the grassroots of playing and the participation and opportunities of playing for girls,’ she said. ‘The WUSA provides great role models for women, and that’s what we’re losing. We’re losing another opportunity for women to look up and say ‘I can get there. I can carry myself as a professional.”
That blow has hit all women involved in soccer, from toddlers tripping over the soccer ball, to pre-teen soccer stars whose walls are lined with posters of Washington Freedom star Mia Hamm and high school players.
Boston-area fans have lost a local asset as well as a team of professionals, including U.S. National Team members Kate Sobrero and Kristine Lilly, will no longer play on BU’s campus.
But the next class of players that would have entered the league may be the hardest hit group, which might have included BU senior goalkeeper Jessica Clinton.
‘I did have aspirations [to play in the WUSA],’ Clinton said, clearly emphasizing the past tense. ‘I trained with [the Breakers] this summer, and it put my hopes up. It’s a great letdown for women’s soccer.’
However, the ‘letdown’ was not exactly unexpected, she said.
‘Seeing from attendance, you sort of knew it was going to happen. You expect it,’ Clinton said.
While women’s soccer feels the brunt of the league’s failure, other women’s sports are feeling the heat at the professional level as well.
In the days of Title IX and a height of opportunity and equality for women’s sports at most levels professional women’s sports have yet to find a way to pull even with the men. Women’s sports lack similar marketing power, as sports fans still turn out in much greater numbers to see their favorite teams and superstars in the National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League and Major League Baseball.
And female athletes have yet to see anything comparing with the corporate sponsorship of men like LeBron James, who signed a lucrative deal with Nike before even playing a professional game.
BU women’s basketball coach Margaret McKeon might have the right diagnosis: it just takes time.
‘The people are going to support [women’s sports],’ McKeon said. ‘You just have to get through a decade before we see a real fan base. We have to wait a whole generation. With all the women athletes today, men should be watching out.’
McKeon said when today’s fans mainly in their 20s, 30s or even younger grow older, they will combine with a younger generation to form a larger fan base.
Her sport’s professional version has seen its share of problems as well, as questions arose last off-season about the Women’s National Basketball Association’s financial state.
‘It says a lot about both leagues that they have lasted as long as they have, and the future is bright,’ she said, adding that the NBA’s financial support of the WNBA virtually secures the league’s future.
‘It’s not going to be the last time [the WUSA plays], I’m certain,’ McKeon said.
In a statement, league officials said they hope the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup starting across the United States this weekend will rejuvenate interest in the sport as it did in 1999, sparking the founding of the WUSA in 2001. The Olympics next summer also have potential to gather sponsors and fans for women’s soccer.
‘I do think the league can rebound and be successful in the future,’ Feldman said. ‘It definitely is a money issue, but I don’t think they’re far off from making it work. I don’t think they are far from securing the sponsorships. I am hoping the women’s world cup will give them a boost.’
Clinton mirrored Feldman’s hopes.
‘The world cup is coming up … and next year is the Olympics,’ she said. ‘I think it’s almost better off to be put on hold.’