Overbeck’s Son in Tune With Day’s Events

Carla Overbeck, the U.S. captain, said her not-quite-2-year-old son, Jackson, is rapidly learning when it’s game day for mom.

“When we were traveling, up until the World Cup started, he’d be on the team bus with the two girls [Joy Fawcett’s daughters Katelyn Rose and Carli] and we’d pull up to the stadium and he’s start saying, ‘U-S-A, All the Way.’

“So he knows that whenever he sees the stadium and the flags, that’s just free rein for him to start cheering.”

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Cindy Parlow was the youngest of the U.S. team’s gold-medal winners at the 1996 Olympics. She was 18 then and saw very limited playing time off the bench.

On Saturday, she was a starter, but the thought of playing in front of a crowd of 78,972 did not faze the youngster from Memphis, Tenn., while she was in the locker room.

“I get the chills every time,” she said. “Everybody asks me, ‘Are you nervous? Are you nervous?’ I don’t get nervous until we march out. And that’s when the jitters are there and like the butterflies are in the stomach. But up until that point I don’t really get nervous.”

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Referee Sonia Denoncourt of Canada was selected to officiate the opening game, becoming the first of 31 female officials who will control the 32 World Cup ’99 matches.

“I guess I’ve been pretty fortunate to have the chance to referee at the Women’s World Cup in Sweden and then in the Olympic Games and many other international tournaments,” she said.

Denoncourt was the first referee to call a men’s game in Brazil, in the opening match of the Sao Paulo championship, and described the experience as “quite something.”

Stepping out into a packed Giants Stadium, therefore, didn’t bother her in the slightest.

“We have exactly the same feeling as the players,” she said. “Although maybe we are not quite as nervous as they are. But we have a job to do, we have to take it seriously. There are lots of vibrations when you hear 80,000 people.”

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Two hours before the United States kicked it off with Denmark, the Giants Stadium parking lot was teeming with tailgaters either knocking soccer balls off automobile bumpers or barbecue chefs firing up the grill.

One man, using tongs to turn over a few links of sizzling sausage, called out in a thick New Jersey accent to no one in particular, “LET’S GO, JETS!”

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How loud was it among the roaring 78,972?

“I’m not kidding you,” U.S. forward Tiffeny Milbrett told reporters in the mixed zone. “My ears were vibrating, the crowd was so loud.”

Mia Hamm’s must have been in the same condition, judging from this exchange with a reporter a few feet away:

Reporter: “Mia, how loud was the crowd out there?” Hamm: “What?”