Dare to Dream

Six years after the winning penalty kick and Brandi Chastain's famous shirtless celebration, the aftershock hit Raleigh on Wednesday night.

It came in a wave of hundreds of girls soccer players from the Capital Area Soccer League. They descended on the Progress Energy Center to see the victory again as part of preview showing of a new HBO sports documentary, "Dare to Dream."

The documentary, which will premiere on HBO on Dec. 11 at 8 p.m., tells the story of five women at the heart of the U.S. team that beat China to win the 1999 World Cup. The game was played before a Rose Bowl crowd of more than 90,000 and a U.S television audience of 30 million, the largest to ever watch a women's team sporting event.

Anson Dorrance, women's soccer coach at North Carolina and a key figure in the development of the sport in the United States, attended the showing. He called the 1999 victory "probably the seminal moment for women's athletics in the world, and to have our sport basically leading the charge for the credibility of women's athletics was wonderful."

-- Jarrett @ 12/01/2005 08:26:00 AM