FANS AT 2015 TICKER TAPE parade for the US Women’s National (Soccer) Team after winning the World Cup (Wikipedia).

You may not have noticed it, but one of the world’s biggest sporting events is creeping up and it doesn’t involve a bat, a helmet or shattering a backboard.

The FIFA Women’s World Cup will be held July 20 to Aug. 20 at 10 locations in nine cities in Australia and New Zealand and – as it should be – team USA is the favorite for the third time in a row.

Sports Illustrated – the nation’s premier athletics publication – has devoted no less than 42 pages in its latest (July) edition, lavishing tons of ink and insight on the female version of the world’s most popular sport, which – by the way – is called soccer here and football everywhere else.

There’s a lot to be said about why the American women have dominated the event, grabbing the title four times so far, but the team has not just been a force on the pitch.

By putting their “trainers” (soccer-speak for athletic shoes) down, the women have insisted on pay equity with the men’s team, which has never advanced further than the semifinals since 1930.

The U.S. has one of the few nations with a top-level women’s professional soccer conference, the National Women’s Soccer League (the local team is Angel City).

Our women have been able to raise consciousness about football here in The States, but have served to remind the world that no one has done more to provide equal status to women than the land of E Pluribus Unum.

So, win or lose (they won’t!), the USNWT will carry the flag as an excellent representative of what America – usually– stands for: liberty and justice for all.