Connie Valeri gleefully sprinted onto the field at Providence Park to give her dad, Diego Valeri, a high five shortly after the Portland Timbers picked up an important home win against the Colorado Rapids in late August.

The eight-year-old wasn't wearing her dad's jersey or donning any Timbers gear at the game. Instead, she was sporting the shirt of one of her favorite players: Portland Thorns midfielder Amandine Henry.

"I don't think she even watches all of our games," said Valeri, who leads the Timbers with 18 goals this season and has scored in an MLS-record eight-straight games. "But she watches every single Portland Thorns game. We love that. She has role models there and that's why her attention is very focused on them."

The Valeri family's voracious support of the Thorns has been well-documented over the last two years, but there are other dads in the Timbers organization that have developed a keen interest in the Thorns and recognize the rewards reaped from exposing their own daughters to world-class female athletes.

Timbers coach Caleb Porter isn't always able to go to Thorns games, but his wife, Andrea, often has their five-year-old daughter, Stella, in tow at matches. Timbers midfielder Darlington Nagbe makes a concerted effort to bring his three-year-old daughter, Mila, to games whenever possible. And former Timbers player and current Timbers Director of Business Development Jack Jewsbury has taken his eight-year-old daughter, Aubrey, and five-year-old daughter, Taylor, to about five Thorns games this season.

At the Thorns home opener this year, Jewsbury brought his daughters down to the autograph line after the match and said it was gratifying to see their enthusiasm as they met players like U.S. Women's National Team mainstays Lindsey Horan and Meghan Klingenberg. Both Aubrey and Taylor now play recreational soccer and Jewsbury said that it is a completely different experience for them to go to Thorns games and see the remarkable skill of top female athletes versus watching Timbers matches.

"Even though they've been around and immersed in the sport for so long, they were really excited to see females in the same way as the male athletes," Jewsbury said. "Hopefully, it rubs off on them in a positive way, whether that's just them enjoying the games or it's them wanting to take the game to the next level and realizing that there is the possibility of playing professionally."

Up until just a few years ago, there was no sustainable professional women's soccer league in the United States that girls could aspire to one day compete in.

Before the National Women's Soccer League was founded in 2013, two previous iterations of women's pro soccer in United States - the WUSA and WPS - had already failed due to overspending and infrastructure issues. But after nearly five full seasons, the NWSL remains on stable footing and has grown into the most competitive women's soccer league in the world.

"When I was growing up, I only watched the national team because that's all there was," Klingenberg said. "Now, it's so easy to watch the NWSL. You can see us on Lifetime, you can see us online, there are commercials about it, there are billboards in Portland. That's really cool. I'm really happy that young women and also young men get to see that... It's important to have female role models. It's important to have strong women to look up to."

Along with inspiring younger children, Thorns defender Emily Sonnett said having a sustainable league in the NWSL gives female collegiate soccer players something they can seriously look toward after their college careers.

"People that are playing collegiately can now kind of say, 'Oh, maybe I can make this a career now,'" Sonnett said. "I think with the continued growth of the league in general and women's soccer more broadly, now it's a feasible option to come out of college and play the sport."

The Thorns, who have a roster stacked with some of the best players in the world and are already set to host a home playoff game, have led the way among women's club soccer teams. Portland is the most well-supported women's club team in the world and currently averages over 17,000 fans per game. Unlike previous women's soccer teams in the U.S., the Thorns have never marketed themselves solely to young girls and the club boasts a diverse fan base of all ages, as well as a raucous supporters' group in the Rose City Riveters.

But there are still a dedicated core of young female supporters that show up to every Thorns game and can take pride in identifying with the athletes on the field.

"We have really marketed the Thorns for what they are, which is a high-quality, professional soccer product," Thorns owner Merritt Paulson said. "That said, you can't deny the fact that having young girls see what women's sport can be and how big it can be is just massive. It's something that I'm proud of and something that will hopefully have an impact in their lives and also an impact on what other cities do with women's sport clubs."

Watching the Thorns but I think she's looking for Dada haha! pic.twitter.com/xuVcd1b6pU — Darlington Nagbe (@darlingtonnagbe) August 4, 2014

Valeri, who has enthusiastically embraced the Portland community since arriving in the Rose City from Argentina in 2013, said that Connie would never have been able to go to his games in Argentina due to safety concerns and there certainly wouldn't have been an opportunity for her to watch women play professionally.

The women's national team in Argentina has been mostly inactive in recent years, causing the team to remain unranked by FIFA. There has been a professional women's league playing under the radar in Argentina since 1991, but it has suffered from a lack of support and a machismo culture around the game.

But here in Portland, Connie has eagerly developed into one of the most visible Thorns superfans.

Last year, she spent an afternoon watching a Thorns training and meeting the players. When Thorns star midfielder Tobin Heath walked over, she jumped up and down with a huge smile on her face. She now likes to tell her dad that Heath is a better player than he is.

And Valeri and his wife, Florencia, couldn't be happier about that.

"It's amazing," Valeri said. "Obviously, in Argentina, it would be impossible for her to go to games. This is a privilege that we have because we live here. The Thorns are maybe the best women's team in the world and we have the privilege to watch them every week."

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com

503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg