“Everyone forgot that they were ‘chicks’. Nobody knew the impact that game would have, the idea that these were athletes as opposed to female athletes.”
They started out on empty fields in small towns and cities across America, a smattering of friends and family gathered to cheer them from the sidelines. Through 17 years of bus trips, concussions, child birth and family deaths, they survived soaring triumphs and devastating losses. Then one day they woke up to find themselves at the center of the world – cultural icons at the forefront of a revolution that would change the landscape of sports.
HBO Sports’ Dare to Dream is one of the great untold sports stories of the 20th century, the story of a remarkable group of athletes who struggled for years to earn an audience, and succeeded in lifting the aspirations of young women throughout the world.
From their beginning in the 1980s as “the red headed stepchild” of sports through four World Cups and three Olympic games, Dare to Dream chronicles the long road traveled by the U.S. women’s soccer team. It focuses on the five veteran members who became the faces of a movement, examining how Mia Hamm broke through as a media phenomenon, why Brandi Chastain’s celebratory moment stirred so much controversy, and how Julie Foudy, Michelle Akers, and Joy Fawcett overcame daunting obstacles to help the team step into history. “They found opportunities where there had been none, and created a new nation of fans,” narrator Liev Schreiber explains. “Their legacy lives on in a generation of young girls who take to the soccer field as if it were their birthright.”
Dare to Dream will feature compelling archival footage and interviews with soccer stars Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly, Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett, April Heinrichs, Briana Scurry, Carla Overbeck and Michelle Akers; national team coaches Anson Dorrance and Tony DiCicco; journalists Robin Roberts, Kelly Whiteside and Sally Jenkins; Olympic gold medal swimmer Donna de Varona; and former tennis champion Billie Jean King, one of sport’s most celebrated trailblazers.
