As the stadium shook from a record 63,004 soccer fans stomping their feet, Denver Summit shouted a revolutionary statement to the world.

Female sports aren’t just for little girls anymore.

“When everybody was stomping their feet, it was like a giant rumble. That was so … intoxicating,” Summit goalkeeper Abby Smith said Saturday, when the new futbol team in town brought the same Rocky Mountain thunder to the Broncos’ home field that our local football heroes do.

With apologies to the Avalanche, we haven’t seen such electric enthusiasm for a pro sports franchise’s debut in Colorado since Eric Young hit a leadoff homer for the Rockies way back in April 1993.

The biggest crowd for any game in the history of the National Women’s Soccer League raised a question for commissioner Jessica Berman.

What the heck took her league so long to put down roots in the best sports city in the USA?

“It was a shocking revelation,” Berman said, “that Denver didn’t have a women’s team.”

Stan and Josh Kroenke have been reluctant to pursue a WNBA franchise because they’ve viewed it as a losing financial proposition. Well, now that the Summit have hit town, let Colorado be a proving ground for a theory of mine.

Women’s pro sports leagues in America have long been celebrated as a league of their own, a shining inspiration to school-age girls that their childhood dreams are not only limitless but possible to make a reality.

That was then. Now? Women’s sports are a growth industry.

When Summit president Jen Millet hung out with the peeps in Empower Field at Mile High, she duly noted that brothers of the little girls were also on their feet and stomping to the “We Will Rock You” beat before the opening kickoff.

“I think there are some 10-year-old boys trying to buy some (Summit) jerseys,” Millet said.

More than 100,000 stomping feet in Denver shattered the old prism that viewed women’s sports as a weak imitation of the games that guys play.

“You are correct. The Summit can inspire men, women, young boys and girls, everyone,” said Rob Cohen, controlling owner of the new soccer team in Colorado.

“There was a discussion we started having a while ago. They don’t call men’s professional basketball the MNBA. So why do they call it the WNBA? The Summit is a sports team.”

No gender distinction required.

If you don’t get caught up in the old chauvinistic comparison to men’s sports, Cohen suggested to me, you can sit back and simply enjoy the athletic prowess of a diving save by Smith in front of the Summit’s goal.

From basketball sensation Caitlin Clark to skiing GOAT Mikaela Shiffrin, we have new proof that female athletes can not only sell tickets and blow the roof off the joint, but move mountains and challenge the old-school way we’ve consumed sports.

While Title IX swung open the arena doors for females in 1972, “women’s sports” have fought and clawed for more than 50 years to be something more than a pejorative term.

Well, grab a shovel or get out of the way.

Because Shiffrin, Clark and the Summit are hard at work, burying the notion that women’s sports are on the undercard of the athletic calendar. Whether it’s the WNBA playoffs or Olympic hockey, women’s sports have staked a legit business claim to being something significantly more important than television filler between NFL games.

More than 46 billion minutes of women’s sports were consumed by American broadcast viewers in 2025, according to Nielsen Media Research.

“If there’s a motto that should be branded across women’s sports, it’s: ‘Build it and they’ll come.’ I think you give fans an opportunity to watch women’s soccer or women’s sports and they will want to,’” Summit captain and Highlands Ranch native Janine Sonis said.

The fact that this match against Washington, led by the U.S. Olympic hero Trinity Rodman, ended in a nil-nil tie was immaterial to everything except the Summit’s brash, get-out-of-our-way goal.

“We’re here,” Sonis said, “to be the first (NWSL) expansion team to win a championship.”

It’s not a question of if, but when the Summit will start winning big.

Whenever the new futbol team in Denver hoists their first trophy, the players will not only champion women, but be champions that can make everybody in town stand up and cheer.

That stomping of feet for a soccer match in the Empower Field at Mile High?

It was the rumbling sound of the next big thing in sports.