American women soar in athletics

It is called the “Canyon of Heroes,” this path along Broadway between the Battery and City Hall, this place where the greatest Americans and distinguished foreigners are honored.

The famous and accomplished have ridden the canyon, doused with ticker-tape, to the cheers of the multitudes, as only New York can rally those multitudes. It is a spectacular and uniquely American site, in the greatest American city.

And on last Friday, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, victorious over Japan on July 5 for the Women’s World Cup, made a bit of history by being the first women’s sports team to get a ticker-tape parade.

The company is pretty good: Theodore Roosevelt after an African safari, Albert Einstein, Gen. John J. Pershing, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Van Cliburn, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

The crowd was huge, with thousands of people holding their cell phones in the air to get pictures, kids riding on the shoulders of parents, people gathered in skyscrapers to watch (and to supply some of the ticker-tape).

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, another woman in this year of women in sports was doing her part. Serena Williams, the incomparable tennis star, won her sixth Wimbledon title and her 21st major championship. In fact, she holds all four majors at the same time, the U.S. Open, the French, the Australian and Wimbleton. She will have a chance at the upcoming U.S. Open to hold all four in the same year.

Williams is spectacularly dominant in her sport, and at the age of 33, playing all the time against teenagers, she’s continuing to prove her durability and determination as well as demonstrating her gifts. She may well surpass, in total victories, the modern champions of the Open era and the ones who came before.

And perhaps some day she’ll ride that Canyon of Heroes.

This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 7:35 PM with the headline "American women soar in athletics."