The University of Georgia women's soccer team made history on Thursday night. Playing their first home game of the new NCAA season, the Bulldogs welcomed a crowd of 25,433 to the football program's famed Sanford Stadium to witness a 6–0 win against James Madison University.
The attendance smashed previous NCAA records for both men's and women's soccer. The women's record had been 14,410, set at a 1999 clash between Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina. The men's record was 22,512 from a 1980 game between St. Louis and SIU Edwardsville.
Georgia's women's team usually plays at the Turner Soccer Complex, which holds a capacity crowd of 1,700. One game into the new season, the crowd of over 25,000 is already nearly 10,000 more than the total 15,916 fans who attended all 12 home games in 2025.
The game, billed as "Soccer at Sanford," marked the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics gold medal final, which was also held at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga. That day, the U.S. women's national team captured its first of five Olympic titles, defeating China 2–1 on a game-winning goal from Tiffeny Milbrett in front of a then-record crowd of 76,489.
The idea to combine the Olympic anniversary with the women's team's opener came from head coach Keidane McAlpine and athletic director Josh Brooks. It served as a marquee event early in the season at the SEC school, which opened its fall semester on Aug. 17.
"This was a major win for the University of Georgia," said McAlpine, who took on the head coaching role in 2021. "It was a major win for collegiate soccer, and we had an opportunity to celebrate one of the best moments in women's soccer ever that I think is the catalyst for us being here right now. I have to show gratitude to all of those people, including the women that kind of set this thing rolling."
Tickets to the game were free, but fans and students still had to pay for other parts of the match-going experience, including parking and concessions.
Some of the most notable names in Bulldogs athletics came out to support the team. Football head coach Kirby Smart watched from the stands, along with the men's basketball team and over 500 other UGA student-athletes.
"I hope they felt special," Smart said on the SEC's broadcast. "This has been an awesome opportunity for them to come and honor a tradition here with what happened 30 years ago. I know they're pumped to get this crowd here… It makes you notice how much these student-athletes care about each other, the fanbase here in Athens."
Added sophomore forward Mya Towns, who opened the scoring against her parents' alma mater: "We went out there and showed everybody exactly what Georgia soccer was. And just to be able to look up in the stands and see so many people riding for us and supporting us and just doing it on such a large scale was really something special."
Women's sports have also drawn huge crowds in other football stadiums. In 2023, the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers drew 92,003 fans to Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb., for a women's volleyball win over the University of Omaha. The same year, the University of Iowa's Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes hosted 55,646 fans at Kinnick Stadium for an exhibition game against De Paul.
Source: www.livescore.com — Read the original article
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