Legacy of 1999 Women's World Cup champions lives in this year's U.S. squad

Martin Rogers | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Lasting impact of 1999 Women's World Cup Some members of the U.S. squad were in college when the USWNT won the 1999 World Cup. Others were only five or six years old. But all remember that epic moment which inspired a nation.

In the years that have followed the United States' epic victory in the 1999 Women's World Cup, Brandi Chastain has never quite figured out what prompted her to rip off her shirt in celebration as she knelt by the penalty spot and celebrated a groundbreaking triumph.

Other players on the squad still pinch themselves from time to time, wondering if it was all real, or if, 16 years on, it was all a dream that could be snatched away in a cruel instant.

You can see why, with so much of what took place in that heady summer of '99 so far removed from American sports' typical realty and structure; traditional stereotypes being slapped away as female athletes became iconic national heroes and the country fell in love with a band of sisters who didn't know how to quit.

Small details jog the memory. President Clinton really was there in the Rose Bowl seats for the final. And yes, that was a fresh-faced J-Lo performing at the opening ceremony.

As with any instant success story much was spoken of the legacy. Would it make women's soccer a major sport in this country? It didn't of course, two women's leagues folded before the current, sensibly run, federation-backed version got going. Would it lead to greater respect for women's sports in general and more coverage? A little perhaps, but still arguably not enough.

But that was always going to be an unfair standard on which to pin a single event, no matter how exciting, how seminal. No, forget about the legacy of 1999 sitting in statistics or participation levels or in a direct comparison with men's soccer or any other sport.

It rests instead in the current women's national team, the successors of the successors of the champions. Soccer moves in four-year cycles dictated in the women's game by the World Cup and the Olympics, so there is plenty of distance, plenty of history passed and memories made, separating the present team from the last American one to win a World Cup title.

Yet each of today's crop have their story, their special recollection of 1999, that instant when a flashbulb went off in a young girl's mind like the millions of them that greeted Chastain's shirt-peeling shriek of joy.

For Sydney Leroux, it changed the very course of her life.

"That is why I'm here, it's why I'm in the U.S. and playing for the U.S.," Leroux told USA TODAY Sports and reflecting on watching the final, and Chastain's kick, in Vancouver, where she lived with her mother. "After seeing that as a 9-year-old I knew what I wanted to do and who I wanted to play for, and eventually it happened."

Abby Wambach, the veteran leader of the national team, was already in college and remembers the excitement that gripped the country as the 1999 team moved closer to the final.

"I can still picture them with their gold medals and seeing the pride and the sense of fulfillment," Wambach said. "I have won Olympic gold medals and I cherish them, and now I want to win a World Cup more than anything. It is time for the U.S. to win it again."

Several of the players went to World Cup games in 1999, either with friends or relatives. Ali Krieger talks of feeling as if she was "touched by magic." Carli Lloyd remembers "the shivers up my spine."

There is, of course, one remaining vestige from 1999 still going strong, while all the others have ventured off into other things. Christie Rampone was on the squad 16 years ago, right at the start of an international career that has now seen her become a veteran of five World Cups and four Olympics and mother to two children.

"Every group is special," Rampone said. "The 1999 thing will always be an incredible time, but I hope this summer we have something incredible to remember as well."

While Rampone, 39, remains remarkably evergreen and still boasts extraordinary levels of fitness, others from 1999 long since moved on, many into other fields.

Sara Whalen, a substitute in the final, is now Dr. Sara Hess, a practicing psychologist in Connecticut.

"It makes you proud to think that the current team see what we did in that way," Whalen said. "We had a sense that something was going on at the time, crowds and attention like that are not normal for soccer in America and for women's soccer.

"But we were focused on our games, we weren't looking ahead to the future too much. To hear that it did truly touch people and that some of those went on to be great players, well, that is a feeling that will last."

There are some serious challengers who feel their name is also destined to be etched on the Cup this year but the U.S. senses its time is now, having come so tantalizingly close last time around and now gone three straight World Cups without winning it all.

Yet pressure, if and when it bites, will likely not come from the weight of history or the ghosts of 16 summers past.

It is hard to be burdened by something that shaped you and in the case of the 2015 team, that is a unanimous sentiment. And so the U.S. national team moves on, with its World Cup opener mere days away, not looking to replace a legacy from yesteryear, but to add to it.