NYC ticker-tape parade Friday for World Cup champion US women’s soccer team – Newsday
Streams of paper fell from the heavens, raining down on the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team from the skyscrapers above like a barrage of goals as New York and a nation celebrated the team’s astonishing 2015 World Cup Championship run with a historic parade through the famed Canyon of Heroes — now and forever also the Canyon of Heroines.
The traditional “ticker-tape” parade through lower Manhattan is a scene made iconic by the likes of Albert Einstein, aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, astronaut John Glenn and sports teams like the New York Yankees, Mets, baseball and football Giants and hockey Rangers. On Friday, it took a long-awaited twist as the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team became the first women’s athletic team to be honored.
World Cup star and team captain Carli Lloyd told the crowd at a City Hall ceremony after the parade that winning the World Cup was a dream come true, “but having this parade here in New York City was one of the best moments of my entire life. And we all feel the same.”
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The parade began at Battery Place at about 11 a.m. with team members on floats and tens of thousands of screaming fans lining the route — and thousands more in the windows above.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was on one float, along with team members Abby Wambach, Christen Press, Julie Johnston, Whitney Engen and defender Christy Rampone, accompanied by daughters Rylie and Reece. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was on another float with Lloyd, as well as U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati.
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton also was present.
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A firefighter aboard an FDNY truck yelled through a loudspeaker to a raucous, celebratory crowd filled with fans of all ages, from screaming young girls to grandmothers who thought they’d never see the day: “I can’t hear you!”
It actually wasn’t true. The spectators’ screams echoed from the starting stage and throughout the Canyon, answered by waving team members, among them Lloyd, who held the World Cup trophy aloft for all to see.
Fans held handmade signs. Some wore oversize Uncle Sam hats, or red, white and blue outfits, or team soccer jerseys, or proudly draped themselves in American flags.
“This is a momentous occasion,” Leslie Goldstein, a Plainview native and resident of SoHo, said as she waited with her girlfriend at City Hall Plaza, the finishing point.
Goldstein said she is the commissioner of the women’s division of the New York Gay Football League — that’s American-style football, not soccer.
“They don’t get the proper support and recognition that they deserve,” she said of women’s sports compared to men’s sports, adding: “I think this is really a turning point.”
Gracie Kirwin, 12, of Battery Park City, lined up with her soccer and softball teammates to show their support on West Street and Bowling Green.
She said the World Cup champs “showed that women can do incredible things.”
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Friend Jamie Morrison, 13, said: “There are a lot stereotypes that women do not have the strength, but we do. We have the intensity and strength.”
Also down near the starting point on Battery Place, Raul Mosquera, 39, of Woodhaven, Queens, said he’d taken the day off from work to attend the parade. He carried photos of the players and hoped to collect their autographs.
“This is for my little girl, when she grows up,” he said. “It will inspire her to play soccer — to be the best she can.”
Nearby, Jamie Minieri, 33, of Battery Park City, in red, white and blue with sparkled American flags painted under her eyes, waited with her mom, Tina, 60.
Her mother, a pioneering soccer mom, said many didn’t understand why she’d signed up her then-young daughter to play soccer, telling the mom bluntly: “It’s a boy’s game.”
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Now? “A lot of people didn’t understand why I put so much effort into athletics,” she said, pointing to her daughter. “She’s a woman today, and she gained confidence from her soccer.”
The barricaded streets created a nuisance and detours for residents heading to work Friday. Most, however, didn’t seem to mind.
Not since Mary Lou Retton, Cheryl Miller and their fellow 1984 Olympic medal winners, including men, were celebrated after the Los Angeles summer games has a woman been given the “ticker-tape” treatment.
The last time a woman was the exclusive focus was in March 1960, when figure-skating champion Carol Heiss Jenkins, a Queens native, was honored.
The first time a woman was honored was October 1919, when King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium were feted. The first woman honored exclusively was in August 1926, when New York native Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, was celebrated.
Crowds had begun to gather hours before the 11 a.m. start, outside City Hall Plaza, as well as at the staging area. Officials said more than 12,000 people tried to get tickets to the City Hall ceremonies; only 3,500 were available.
Tens of thousands lined barricaded sidewalks along the parade route — the scene of more than 200 parades since the first impromptu parade following the Statue of Liberty dedication ceremonies in 1886.
Confetti in the Canyon rained on the 23 players — including stars Alex Morgan, Wambach and Lloyd, who scored three times in the first 16 minutes of the team’s astonishing 5-2 win over Japan in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sunday. It was the third World Cup title for the United States and first since a historic win in 1999.
Trailing the parade were sanitation workers, who made fast work cleaning the parade route of streamers and other celebratory debris; the cleanup along Broadway, was accompanied by a serenade from parade-goers who made impromptu work of the Beatles tune “Twist and Shout” — turning it into a verse that went, “Sweep a little closer now, twist and sweep!”
Later, at City Hall, where members were presented with ceremonial keys to the City, de Blasio said of the admiration of fans and of a nation: “You can see it in the faces of men and women, boys and girls.” He later said that “when they brought home that trophy, they also brought back a message about the power of women, about the strength of women.”
And, he added, they also made us aware of “the need to create a more equal society.”
Thousands of police officers — including anti-terrorism units — were posted along the parade route and the event appeared to go off without a hitch. A push from Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who circulated a petition calling for a parade, and Howard Wolfson, former deputy mayor under Michael Bloomberg, helped the plans become reality, de Blasio said.
The $2 million celebration was funded in part by private sponsors, including Nike and Major League Soccer.
“I can’t tell you we had a beautiful plan on the shelf and we thought about this weeks and months ago,” de Blasio admitted Thursday.
But, he added that city leaders quickly came to the conclusion a parade must be held because the championship was a statement “to the world about the growing powerful role of women in this country.”
With Maria Alvarez and Matthew Chayes
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