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WSW's Most Valuable Person of World Cup '99

World Cup organizing committees by their nature start off with difficult challenges in their approach to the grassroots soccer community in the United States. They are primarily a group of money minded people with a corporate outlook, and with a limited time in which to achieve their financial goals. The 1999 World Cup committee (like their 1994 counterparts) had little understanding of or connection to the soccer community which had sacrificed and supported the growth of the women's game for many years in this country.

Fortunately, for the millions of women's soccer participants around the USA and the rest of the world, Donna de Varona was asked to be Chairperson of the 1999 Women's World Cup Organizing Committee. An athlete herself, at age seventeen she won two swimming Olympic Gold Medals in 1964, and as a founding member and first president of the Women's Sports Foundationª, she was well versed in the trials and tribulations accompanying the growth of women's sports. Her close relationship with the Women's Sports Foundation, her long time career with ABC Sports and her nonstop hardworking efforts were a significant part of the incredible media explosion that surrounded this World Cup.

In addition, her attendance and participation at so many of the international women's matches in the years preceding the Cup endeared her to everyone she met. She created the badly needed link between the corporate minded committee, the women's soccer community and the media with her classy professionalism (Quote to go with photo: "It's a gift to be part of this team - to still be alive when the future looks so bright for women's sports." WSW Sept/Oct 1997)

©WSW Special Edition - WWCup 1999