The National Women's Soccer League kicked off its historic fifth season on April 15, showcasing its product to a national television audience on Lifetime for the first time as the Portland Thorns hosted the Orlando Pride in front of a remarkable 16,145 fans at Providence Park.

It was a watershed moment for the young league and a sign of just how far the NWSL and women's soccer in the United States have come.

"Just the fact that the league exists now five years in is a massive statement in and of itself," Thorns owner Merritt Paulson said. "When you look at the history of women's pro soccer in this country, no other league has made it past three seasons. Do we have a lot of room to grow and a lot of improvements to make? 100 percent, but let's not lose sight of the fact that we've come as far as we have."

While two previous iterations of women's pro soccer in the United States - the WUSA and the WPS - folded after three seasons due to overspending and infrastructure issues, the NWSL has grown steadily each year since its inception in 2013 and entered its monumental fifth season in April on solid footing.

The league made strides in 2014 and 2015 by adding expansion teams, but the NWSL took its boldest steps forward this offseason as it entered into a multi-faceted partnership with A+E Networks that included a landmark three-year TV deal to have weekly games broadcast on Lifetime, agreed to a rights-paying streaming deal with go90 and doubled its minimum player salary.

"We've always wanted to be the best women's soccer league in the world," NWSL managing director of operations Amanda Duffy said. "We're always going to be pushing to be better at what we're doing and making sure we have the right resources, the right funding, the right foundation in every market."

Unlike its predecessors, the NWSL has benefited from an emphasis on careful spending and sustainable growth, as well as the solid backing of U.S. Soccer and the Canada Soccer Association.

But the most noticeable asset that has set this league apart is the extraordinary success and profitability of the Portland Thorns. The NWSL's flagship franchise has led the way for the fledgling league as it has developed into the most successful women's club brand in the world, averaging an incredible 16,945 fans per game in 2016. The league's other nine teams taken together averaged just 4,292 fans per game last season.

"I think that the Thorns have shown the world what a professional women's sports team can be certainly off the field with the size and quality of our fan base, the relevance in the community and by creating something that is financially viable," Paulson said. "Certainly there's a lot more to the success of this league than the Thorns, but I do think the Thorns have been a driver of this league."

Still, the Thorns remain an anomaly in women's soccer and despite the unprecedented success of the NWSL, the league still has a long way to go as it strives to raise its level of professionalism and become viable for the long-term.

While the NWSL is already arguably the most competitive women's soccer league in the world on the field with the majority of the U.S. Women's National Team roster and some international superstars, including Marta and Amandine Henry, competing for its teams, the quality of facilities and infrastructure varies considerably from market to market.

Like the Thorns, the Houston Dash and Orlando Pride are both backed by MLS teams and are able to take advantage of that built-in infrastructure, while the Western New York Flash were taken over by the same ownership group as NASL side North Carolina FC and rebranded as the North Carolina Courage this year. But the remaining clubs are independently owned and, as such, conditions throughout the league remain uneven.

"I believe we still need to raise the bar on minimum standards," Paulson said. "The quality of the playing conditions and the training conditions and the staffing in and around the players in a lot of cases could be improved. They don't have to be where the Thorns are, but there are teams that can certainly do more locally to build up their own relevancy as well."

Salaries remain another significant issue for the NWSL.

The league, which has a six-month season, took a big step forward this year by raising its minimum salary from $7,200 to $15,000, but it's still difficult for players to make ends meet and many must take outside jobs to supplement their modest incomes. Off the field, Thorns defender Katherine Reynolds works in public relations at WE Communications, forward Nadia Nadim is in medical school and defender Emily Menges works part-time during the season and full-time in the offseason for Revcaster, a company that does hotel-rate shopping.

"There are definitely things that we want and we think that we deserve, but we know that takes time and we understand that," Menges said. "All we can do is keep building the culture and keep building the following and helping out our club and the league as much as we can."

Building a sustainable league does take time and that's something that many of the players in the NWSL recognize as a fact of life in a fledgling enterprise.

Thorns and USWNT defender Meghan Klingenberg began her professional career in Women's Professional Soccer before the league folded in 2012. Unlike in the WPS, Klingenberg has seen the NWSL make strides each year and it has given her hope for the future of women's soccer in the United States.

"I think getting over that first hump of making ourselves viable, making ourselves recognizable has happened and now we're a stable league, but now I want to see more growth," Klingenberg said. "I want to see more investment in players, in coaching staff, in the technical side of the game, in equipment and facilities. But I think each year it's getting better and I'm excited to see where the league can go."

While the growing pains remain, the NWSL isn't going anywhere, any time soon.

The upward trajectory of the league has been clear over the last five years and the Thorns have set a new standard for what fan support for women's soccer in the United States can achieve.

"Five years from now, can we have 10 home openers that look like what we saw in Portland?" Duffy said. "I think even if half the league is achieving something close to that, we are certainly making the right strides and taking the right steps forward to get this league where we want it to be."

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com

503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg