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They say there’s no cheering allowed in the press box, but nobody ever said anything about crying—which is a good thing for me because I shed tears in two different press boxes over the course of four days.

Most of you come here because I am a buzzkill, unafraid to criticize the growing women’s sports leagues that have been underchampioned and underwatched for the entirety of their existences. You are here because I refuse to be an uncritical cheerleader who believes that all investment is good investment and all growth is good growth. But I am someone who criticizes things because I love them, because I have hope that the things I love can get better and be better.

And I love women’s sports with my whole entire heart, which is how I found myself weeping—once while sitting behind glass above the south goal at Gillette Stadium for Boston Legacy FC’s debut, and another time from above center ice at Agganis Arena during the Boston Fleet’s homecoming game following the Olympic break. Both were moments when the music was loud and the crowd was singing, moments when a mass of people begin to move like a single organism. Full stadiums of people watching their hometown teams losing, in arenas that technically belong to other teams, and enjoying every second of it.

It was, quite simply, just sports. But it was so much more than that.

I had just started covering sports full-time when the NWSL’s Boston Breakers folded in 2018, and I watched the fans mourn. I regretted not having covered them myself, even though I didn’t know much about soccer at that point and was just starting to dip my toes into the women’s game through covering the WNBA. I have been going to pro women’s hockey games in Boston since the NWHL’s Boston Pride were playing in Warrior Ice Arena, the 700-seat Bruins practice facility. There were times when I was the only credentialed media member at the game.

There’s been lots of coverage claiming that we’ve reached a tipping point in the popularity of women’s sports, that they are mainstream now. WNBA players are coming off a season where they got a revenue sharing payout for the first time in league history. The PWHL keeps setting attendance records and selling out NHL arenas, first in Canadian cities and now at forthcoming games at TD Garden in Boston and Madison Square Garden in New York City. The NWSL opened their season with record-breaking attendance numbers. And all three leagues are consistently expanding, adding more teams in new cities that are clamoring for franchises of their own.

But this week was the first time I really felt it. I’m watching the growth of women’s sports from Boston, which has been a men’s sports town first and foremost. Despite it being named 7th on The Athletic’s list of “best women’s sports cities in America,” and Massachusetts governor Maura Healy wanting to make us “the hub of women’s professional sports,” there have been challenges to really being able to do that.

New England’s WNBA team plays in Connecticut, in a location that’s just far enough away that most fans in the Greater Boston area won’t regularly make the drive to attend, though they’ve started playing a single game per season at TD Garden (which is always a sellout). The Boston Legacy will eventually play in a stadium located within Boston city limits, but it’s not ready yet so fans have to drive to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro (a nightmare) or Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (an annoyance). And while the Boston Fleet play a few games per season at Boston University’s Agganis Arena, most of their games are at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, which is a brutal commute made worse when you add in the fact that most games’ start times require driving through rush hour traffic out of the city to get there. The Boston Banshees of the Women's Elite Rugby league play in Quincy. And the Boston Renegades, our city’s women’s football team that has been the most dominant team in the sport for nearly a decade, paused operations last year as they try to figure out how to survive.

We also lack a real women’s sports bar in the way other cities have one. A franchise of The Sports Bra will be opening here but doesn’t currently have a timeline or location. And we have Drawdown Brewery, a queer-owned spot that has really leaned into showing and promoting women’s sports, but it’s a narrow space with limited seating and fairly small televisions that make for a challenging viewing experience.

All of that is to say that it’s often felt like the women’s sports boom is happening around me in ways that I believe but couldn’t really see. This week felt different.

Over 30,000 fans made the schlep to Gillette to watch the Legacy’s first game, and the vibe in the stands and along the concourse was buzzing. So many people showed up decked out with Legacy gear that they’d already had purchased in preparation, and the Boston Independent Supporters Group flew the tifo they’d painstakingly painted to welcome their new team onto the field. I was one of the only people in the press box who left the warmth and relative quiet of the glass enclosure to venture out into the stands, but you can’t truly feel the game unless you sit among the fans. And I wanted to know what it felt like.

Nearly a decade after the Boston Breakers folded, Boston women’s soccer triumphantly returned to a city that wished it had never left. Only one player on the field had been there for both games—Midge Purce, who was a rookie on the Breakers during their final season. “I can't even say I played for the same Boston,” Purce, who now plays for Gotham FC, told Alex Azzi of the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast after Saturday’s game. “Which is really amazing, and it's a huge testament to how much the league has grown and how much this standard for what we're doing has been rightly so raised.”

And then there were the Boston Fleet, playing in the city for their first game back at home following an Olympic break that saw seven players take the ice in Milano Cortina. Four of those players brought home medals—Alina Müller won bronze with Switzerland, while Megan Keller, Aerin Frankel, and Haley Winn won gold with Team USA. Frankel, the goalie, only let in two goals all tournament, while Keller scored the golden goal in overtime that won the U.S. the gold medal.

The sold out crowd cheered for their hometown heroes. Every time Frankel made a good save, the entire arena would chant her name: “Frankel! Frankel! Frankel!” When the Fleet were on power play, fans yelled, “to the brig!” while the opposing player skated to the penalty box. There was a man in the stands attending his first-ever hockey game, whose girlfriend was talking him through the action on the ice. And then, the moment that brought me to tears. That enthusiastic crowd cheering on their own women’s hockey team, the team that is at the top of the standings, while singing “Shipping Up to Boston” as loud and enthusiastically as they could.

The song that is synonymous with men’s sports in this city carries over to the women’s teams, too. After all, sports are sports.

I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be cynical again, and I’ll find something else to criticize about Boston women’s sports. In the last month alone, I’ve written about the Legacy’s questionable new partnership with a controversial pharmaceutical company, and the fact that the PWHL is owned by a dude who funds ICE. There is still work to be done. There will always be work to be done.

But today I am feeling romantic about women’s sports, which for so long have been spoken about in terms of potential. This week gave me a different view of them—one of actuality. It feels less like women’s sports could be a phenomenon, and more like they are one. Women’s sports are no longer the future, but instead they are our present.

For every fan who showed up to games when the stands were empty, every blogger who covered these athletes for free, every media member who felt the games were worth being credentialed for? Mama, we made it.

How can you not be romantic about women’s sports? Because I definitely am.

(Also! Venezuela beat Team USA to win the World Baseball Classic last night! It was poetic! And so dope!)