DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And next, to the streets of Vancouver. Throngs of American soccer fans brought traffic to a crawl there yesterday. They were celebrating a Women's World Cup championship.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: USA, USA, USA.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Those were just some of the thousands of Americans who packed the stadium to see Team USA defeat Japan 5-2.
LISA KURIAN: Yeah, we were inside. Awesome, incredible.
GREENE: Lisa Kurian traveled from Oregon, and she got to see U.S. Captain Carli Lloyd score a hat trick. It really was an amazing performance. Kurian also watched the last U.S. World Cup win back in 1999.
KURIAN: Back then, like, it was just starting in the U.S., and it was such, like, a watershed moment for the women to win that. And now the women on the team were the same kids that watched that.
MONTAGNE: And presumably saw those early players as role models, which is why Jeanine Olic traveled here with her daughter. She says her daughter looks up to the Team USA players.
JEANINE OLIC: It becomes more real when you have a role model that could be you. And there's so much that she learns from soccer, that I really love seeing her watch it come to fruition for people she aspires to be.
GREENE: And we can say this for sure - 11-year-old Ashley Stambaugh, from Missouri, was leaving Vancouver feeling pretty inspired.
ASHLEY STAMBAUGH: I think I can win a World Cup, too.
MONTAGNE: All right. And last night, the U.S. women crushed the Japanese to win the World Cup. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.