NWSL Week 2 preview: Over 20,000 will watch Orlando Pride on Saturday, but how many will stay?

I don’t like talking about attendance numbers. I might even hate it, kind of. Okay, so that’s sort of a lie. Because I definitely retweeted some things when they set the record in Portland, when the Dash took the field for the first time in Houston, when Sky Blue FC managed to make it to a four-digit number. Times I have not mentioned attendance, very much on purpose: all other times. Hi, my name is Lauren and I only like talking about attendance numbers when they’re good. I also don’t like black pepper or cucumbers, and will redact it from cookbook pages with a black Sharpie/cut them up in tiny pieces to hide them from myself in my food, respectively. I’ll let you find the parallels between my cookbook vandalism and not a lot of people wanting to go watch soccer games.

Get it? It’s that if the cucumbers are small enough or the black marker is dark enough, I can pretend those things aren’t there. Sort of like how if I don’t talk about how only maybe a few thousand or less people are showing up to games, I can pretend it’s not happening. I realize this is a view of the whole thing that’s pretty myopic and unhelpful, especially considering that I’ve already written a farewell to a women’s pro league once in my life. And yet I persist, wearing rose-colored glasses that would make even Pia Sundhage circa 2010 jealous.

So far in 2016, I haven’t needed those glasses. And yes, it’s only been a week and I have an eye doctor appointment in June, but for now, I’m rocking nothing rose-tinted and everything looks fine. It looked good in Portland last week when the Thorns drew 16,073 to Providence Park to open their 2016 season against Orlando, and it’s supposed to look just as rosy -- no glasses required -- when the Pride have their own home opener this Saturday at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando.

If Orlando hopes to do a little better in duplicating their opening day attendance success as the season goes on, they’ve built a pretty good base with season tickets. As of Tuesday, the Pride already had around 5,000 season ticket holders, which is not only better than the Dash’s entire average attendance in its inaugural season, it’s better than the average attendances of every team in NWSL in each of the previous three seasons, with the exception of the Dash in 2015, and Portland since always.

You know about the hat trick and the podium and the trophy and the ticker tape that’s really just people’s shredded bank statements that will hurt you as they fall in large chunks from above. Suddenly, people in Houston had a chance to see that, the best player in the world, an American hero, a legend, in the flesh every week. The Dash’s first home game post-World Cup: a franchise record 13,205.

Go to an NWSL game in any city/out of the way suburb we’re pretending is a city and listen to the hordes of small children as the lineups are announced. They’ll cheer for their team, because that’s what they’re supposed to do and they’ve been parented at least partially right, but the biggest cheers often go to the biggest names, regardless of the shirt they wear. You haven’t really heard 800 preteen girls scream until you’ve heard them scream for Alex Morgan on a humid summer Sunday in New Jersey.

Now, as a person who is well into being an adult -- at least, according to my driver’s license -- a proper sports fan, someone who thinks children are sticky and kind of creepy, and an idealist, I hate this. I hate it as much, or maybe more, than I hate talking about attendance numbers. But I also understand that it’s a necessary-for-now evil of a league still in its infancy and still sitting somewhere between resistant and downright refusing to market to anyone other than Children, Think of The.

The Pride have the advantage of having some of those household names, Morgan chief among them, available to be screeched at on a regular basis. And they’ll have another, in Lloyd and Dash for the home opener this week. They’ve also got last week’s performance in Portland, which was a loss but still showed the Pride as a team that’s going to be competitive despite its status as an expansion club.

The question is whether the numbers the Pride will welcome through the gates this week are sustainable, or if they matter right now. NWSL is still only in its fourth year, and while it’s a “light the fireworks and throw a party” milestone for women’s soccer in the U.S., it’s still ultimately pretty young, as far as pro sports leagues go overall.

Saturday will be an impressive debut, no doubt, but it’s not the real test. That comes later, when Morgan is out or when a bottom of the table team rolls through or when Orlando is that bottom of the table team. It comes when it’s hot or raining or when riding Space Mountain (which despite what I thought/hoped for far too long, is not what’s on the Pride’s logo) just gets too tempting. It comes on weeknights and in August and in September. And if the Pride can get even half of what they’re going to on opening weekend, maybe that’s good enough, for now, no rose-colored glasses required.

All times ET