This editorial appears in the July/August edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.

Before she became the best women’s soccer player on the planet, Abby Wambach was a wide-eyed 16-year-old girl entering the Team USA pipeline at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif. She gasped when she saw Michelle Akers, another greatest-of-all-time candidate who was in her prime.

Akers, ripped with muscle tone from head to toe, jumped into a scrimmage with the young footballers. They played make-it, take-it. Akers’ side trailed late. She went nose-to-nose with her goalie and yelled with vein-popping authority.

“Give…me…the ball!”

The meek goalie obliged, and Akers scored. She returned to the goalie with the same demand.

“Give…me…the ball!”

Again she scored, and again and again.

Needless to say, “We lost that game,” said Wambach, who was on the other team.

Wambach told this story in an hour-long address to the U.S. women’s team June 11 at US Lacrosse headquarters, because, as she put it, “I had never seen a woman step into her power like that.”

An outspoken advocate for women’s and LGBT rights and equality in sports, Wambach noted that the year was 1996, when women’s soccer would make its Olympic debut. Look at how far the sport has come in just 23 years since.

Lacrosse, she said, is ready for its breakthrough moment. LA 2028, anyone?

Wambach urged unity and emphasized that it was up to the women in the room to advance the game.  “Because sure as hell, I want to see you in the 2028 Olympics,” she said.

Women in lacrosse have played a key role not only in the Olympic movement — The World Games in Poland two years ago were a major milestone — but also in the effort to curtail early recruiting and enliven the sport with a shot clock. The women’s game is the fastest-growing segment of the nation’s fastest-growing college sport. After significant lobbying, the NCAA championship, contested in front of nearly 10,000 fans at Homewood Field, was televised nationally by ESPN and garnered a 50-percent increase in ratings.

“Way to go, women’s lacrosse,” North Carolina coach Jenny Levy said after the Tar Heels’ loss to Boston College in a double-overtime semifinal thriller. “We put on a show tonight.”

Levy, also the coach of the U.S. national team, arranged for Wambach to speak to the team. Her husband, Dan, is Wambach’s agent.

Ultimately, the women in the room all felt like they were agents, too. Agents of change.