Our favorite women’s soccer memorabilia collected throughout our careers: Linehan and Yang

Sports fans are familiar with the instinct to become a bit of a pack rat with treasured items gleaned over the years, whether it’s programs, ticket stubs, merchandise, or even little scraps from game day (like the confetti from championship cannons). Over the years, Steph Yang and I have amassed our own collections of women’s soccer odds and ends, both as fans and as journalists.

We each have boxes of old credentials with so, so many lanyards, jerseys, and scarves, but we tried to go a little outside the box (pun intended). It felt like a perfect time for us to do this little trip down memory lane, especially as Steph departs at the end of the year. Our careers have intersected in many ways over the years, not just here but also covering the Boston Breakers for several years, so it was a fun exercise in digging through the bins and rediscovering some gems.

Here are our (current) five most cherished memorabilia items.

Boston Breakers WPS era noisemaker — Steph

The team must have handed these out at its inaugural game or something, when they were playing at Harvard Stadium. Of course, you got two of them to bang together, but I sensibly only kept one deflated stick to remember being a fan. It definitely sounded louder in the big concrete bowl of Harvard Stadium proper, instead of Jordan Field, the much smaller venue the Breakers moved to in the NWSL.

Custom Becky Sauerbrunn nickname USWNT Centennial Kit — Meg

The U.S.’s 2013 Centennial look, which celebrated the federation’s 100th anniversary, was one of the best for the national teams. Rather than opting for a standard player jersey, I used the custom feature to figure out just how many O’s they would let me add to a BROOOOOOOON jersey. Turns out it was only four. Also, a fun fact: the first jersey they sent me was a BROOOOM jersey, so it became a bit of an absurdist email chain back and forth with customer service trying to get it fixed to BROOOON. But I had to go with a Becky Saurbrunn item for the jump after she announced her decision to retire this week.

Boston Breakers 2015 media credential — Steph

I’ll be a little sentimental here. This was my first season credential as a soccer journalist: covering the 2015 Boston Breakers in the NWSL for The Bent Musket. I started freelancing in 2014. It wasn’t really freelancing. I was just writing about soccer as an eccentric little hobby for free. Eventually, I got more into it and decided I didn’t want to practice law. In 2015, the league was like, “Sure, you’re the only person who shows up every game.” I was getting paid enough to cover an MBTA transit pass each month, maybe.

Rose Lavelle “Sweet Chaos” New Balance cleats — Meg

U.S. women’s national team midfielder Rose Lavelle was the first women’s soccer player New Balance signed, and while she didn’t stick with them in the long run, the one special drop they did for Lavelle remains the only pair of cleats I’ve ever gone out of my way to purchase. They were a numbered run of 116 pairs (mine was 106), but the custom logo they did for Lavelle looks so nice on the heels of these. They’re a key part of my main soccer display with some awards and other women’s soccer items I’ve acquired through the years.

Alyssa Naeher’s game worn 2014(?) Boston Breakers jersey — Steph

I have no memory about how I acquired this — it was likely the team’s annual end-of-season event, at which you could usually bid on players’ jerseys. That, or eBay. Ocean Spray is the sponsor on the front, which is still the greatest pairing of front-of-kit sponsor with a team in the history of soccer. It has this tape that reinforces the seams at the shoulders, which makes sense, I guess, for a goalkeeper. Naeher has pretty broad shoulders, so maybe she was feeling a tug there. It’s a three-quarter sleeve. I would wear this jersey out and about. There are not enough long-sleeved NWSL jerseys; if you want a long-sleeve, usually you have to get a goalkeeper jersey.

Assorted select Boston Breakers shirts —Meg

I’m cheating big time, but since Steph brought up long sleeves, I have a long-sleeved Breakers Kelley O’Hara #19 jersey from her WPS days that I had to throw into the pile. That, and I pulled two things from my Boston Breakers WUSA days as a wee intern the club somehow agreed to let work in the press box: a signed Kristine Lilly WUSA jersey and a T-shirt that has somehow withstood the test of time from opening day. Look at the design, a barcode for the inaugural home match! It’s wildly dated (no pun intended this time).

Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan L’Equipe 2019 cover and Rapinoe name placard — Steph

Meg and I were both in France for the 2019 World Cup. I like to buy local newspapers at big tournaments and grabbed this one on my way out of the country. For the name placard, this had to have been from media day before the tournament in New York City where the players are put at different tables and everyone circulates around the room. They usually get thrown away or recycled after press conferences! So, I grabbed this one. A very powerful name placard.

1999 World Cup and 2001 WUSA final pennants — Meg

Who amongst us does not love to steal a name placard from a media event? I’ve tried to nab a good one every year and grabbed Pinoe’s from the 2023 NWSL championship media day. (This year? Trinity Rodman, because Steph beat me to Marta’s.)

Folks might have seen these in the background of the “Full Time” podcast, but the 2001 Founders Cup pennant has survived so many moves throughout the years that it’s something of a miracle it has remained in my possession. That was my first women’s soccer championship match, and I have… basically no memory of being out in Foxborough on a hot August day. The 1999 World Cup one was a lucky eBay find. I spend maybe too much time looking for what’s available in terms of 99ers, WUSA and WPS merchandise. Am I trying to build my own small museum exhibit? Maybe.

Canceled Honolulu USWNT game scarf — Steph

You know I love a misprint or a discontinued item. This is a Dec. 6, 2015, Honolulu, Hawaii scarf. You will remember that this game was never played. Unfortunately, on Dec. 4, Megan Rapinoe tore her ACL on the training field, which reportedly was in “poor” condition, per Julie Foudy at the time. There were also concerns over big seams in the turf at Aloha Stadium, and the game was ultimately canceled. I think the way players like Morgan and Carli Lloyd were extremely vocal about wanting better playing conditions ahead of this game was definitely part of the build-up toward the equal pay fight in 2019. Anyway, they were still selling the scarves in the USSF’s online store and I was like, “I guess they gotta get rid of the merch somehow.”

Sinead Farrelly WPS draft card — Meg

It’s honestly a little funny that I’m the one listing a card here and not Steph — she’s much more of a collector than I am, though every once in a while I’ll try to pick up a set. Sometimes I’ll look up a specific player on eBay too. When I was in the final stages of writing the big story about Farrelly and Mana Shim, I went looking, and this card has lived next to my desk since I found it. Fortunately, the seller shipped it in a pretty decent sleeve, but at some point, I’ve got to upgrade it to a real display in a slab. I might already have purchased more valuable cards when it comes to resale value, but this is the one that’s always going to matter most to me.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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