Abby Wambach, No. 20, celebrates scoring in opposition to North Korea through the 2003 FIFA Ladies’s World Cup at Historic Crew Stadium. The U.S. received 3-0. Photograph: Mark Lyons/Getty Photographs
Arike Ogunbowale shocked the basketball world when she sank a clutch shot at Nationwide Area to place her Notre Dame Combating Irish within the 2018 nationwide championship recreation.
State of play: That epic Ultimate 4 was a triumph for native organizers working to make Central Ohio a premier hub for girls’s sports activities.
The Larger Columbus Sports activities Fee celebrates Nationwide Ladies and Ladies in Sports activities Day immediately by each reflecting on championship occasions the town has hosted and waiting for these deliberate for the approaching years.
Why it issues: These high-profile occasions encourage the following technology of athletes who get to see world-class opponents up shut.
They usually have proved to be a serious tourism and financial draw for the town.
What they’re saying: “We all know we are able to roll out the pink carpet higher than anybody,” Linda Logan, longtime govt director for the Sports activities Fee, tells Axios.
“We’re attracting the perfect coaches and finest athletes to our group due to these applications, due to these alternatives.”
By the numbers: The 2018 ladies’s Ultimate 4 video games generated $21.7 million in customer spending, per knowledge the Larger Columbus Sports activities Fee shared with Axios.
The bulk (60%) of followers on the town to see Connecticut, Notre Dame, Mississippi State and Louisville had been first-time guests to Ohio.Columbus has additionally hosted ladies’s collegiate championships in bowling and volleyball.
Flashback: Probably the most important ladies’s sporting occasion we have hosted might have been in 2003, when a number of Ladies’s World Cup matches had been performed at Historic Crew Stadium.
Sure, however: We’re is greater than only a worthy impartial website for athletic competitions. Our space has its personal bragging rights, too.
What’s subsequent: Columbus is already gearing as much as host the next main occasions in ladies’s sports activities:
April 28-30: USA Volleyball Ohio Valley Area junior volleyball championships 2024: Division III Ladies’s Basketball Championship, Nationwide Collegiate Fencing Championship2025: Division I Ladies’s Golf Championships (regionals)2026: Nationwide Collegiate Rifle Championships2027: Division I Ladies’s Ultimate 4