BOULDER — The irony’s as cru­el as an own goal, as cut­ting as a Lind­say Horan header.

Only a hand­ful of tick­ets were left after Memo­r­i­al Day for the USA-South Korea friend­ly at Dick’s Sport­ing Goods Park on Sat­ur­day. Any oth­er sum­mer, Miran­da Spencer and Annie Weaver would’ve snapped those pup­pies up.

“We’re pret­ty sad we’re not going,” Weaver told me Tues­day with a rue­ful chuckle.

“We would def­i­nite­ly be there,” Spencer added.

They’ve got a good rea­son, though. The best. Spencer and Weaver can’t make one of Front Range’s pre­mier women’s sports events of the year because they’re still burn­ing the mid­night oil get­ting a pre­mier women’s sports bar for Den­ver up and running.

The 99ers Sports Bar, Spencer and Weaver’s pas­sion project, is aim­ing for a July grand open­ing. But if you want a taste of what’s to come at 909 E. Col­fax, Miran­da and Annie are hold­ing a pre­view pop-up/U.S. Women’s Nation­al Team soc­cer game-watch par­ty on Sat­ur­day from 2 to 6 p.m. at Lady Jus­tice Brew­ing in Englewood.

“(The pop-up) gives peo­ple a chance to watch it,” Spencer said. “Espe­cial­ly for those who couldn’t make it to the game or couldn’t afford tick­ets to the game.” Ave.

After all, they wouldn’t be there with­out them. Or rather, they wouldn’t not be there with­out them.

The 99ers is named for, and inspired by, the leg­endary USWNT that won the 1999 World Cup, a bench­mark moment for women’s sports — and for how women’s sports have been watched and cov­ered since.

“I think for women’s sports, they show­cased it, they start­ed it,” Spencer said. “With­out them, there is no this. With­out the ceil­ings they broke and con­tin­ue to do so, there is not an us.

“They paved the way for us to feel empow­ered to do what we’re doing. It gave young ath­letes some­thing to aspire to be and to believe in some­thing that was achievable.”

Spencer’s from Ida­ho. Weaver’s from Iowa. See­ing The Stars & Stripes on the pitch a Mile High is espe­cial­ly near and dear to Annie’s heart. She was 6 years old when Bran­di Chas­tain rocked the Rose Bowl in ’99, shat­ter­ing anoth­er glass ceil­ing along the way. Fast for­ward 15 or so years, she grew up to become a defend­er for the women’s soc­cer team at Cen­tral Col­lege, a Divi­sion III pro­gram in tiny Pel­la, Iowa, a burg prob­a­bly best known to locals as the home of Pel­la win­dows and for­mer NBA sharp­shoot­er Kyle Korver.

“We were young, but we both remem­ber (’99),” Weaver said. “It was one of those moments in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly being a young female athlete.”

It was one of those moments that didn’t just open eyes. It brought them back. And kept them. Espe­cial­ly on the broad­cast front, where the big checks get writ­ten. You haven’t real­ly made it in Amer­i­can sports until TV net­works decide they love you. Or because TV adver­tis­ers will pony up the cash to hang with you, whichev­er comes first.

Per WorldSoccerTalk.com, the 10 USWNT games that aired over lin­ear net­works in 2023 aver­aged 338,400 view­ers per match, which ran pret­ty close to the men’s nation­al team’s aver­age rat­ings over its 10 lin­ear-net­work appear­ances (380,300). The USWNT’s 2023 TV rat­ings were report­ed­ly its high­est since 2019, with an aver­age of 1.56 mil­lion view­ers over 14 record­ed data points, and a jump of 330% over 2022.

There’s an audi­ence, all right. A tribe that’s look­ing for places to gath­er, to cel­e­brate, to com­mis­er­ate. And the growth of women’s sports in TV, fueled in part by soc­cer and the WNBA — pag­ing Caitlin Clark — has giv­en rise to the con­cept of sports bars themed toward women’s sports and women’s ath­let­ics. The Sports Bra, a women’s sports-cen­tered bar in Port­land, opened in April 2022. Accord­ing to a recent piece at CNBC.com, its own­er, Jen­ny Nguyen, says she made rough­ly $1 mil­lion over her first eight months in business.

“I think it’s smart,” USWNT strik­er and Wind­sor native Sophia Smith said when asked about The 99ers bar before the team’s Tues­day prac­tice ses­sion at CU. “I think it’s smart for peo­ple to get on board with that.

“And it’s a cool con­cept, because still women’s sports are hard to watch. You have to have sub­scrip­tions or it’s on dif­fer­ent stream­ing plat­forms. So if you can go some­where and it’s on and easy to access, I think that’s amaz­ing. And, yeah, I think it’s a smart invest­ment for (Spencer and Weaver).”

The 24ers are out there giv­ing love to The 99ers. How cool is that?

“I don’t think it ever gets old,” Miran­da said.

“I don’t have words,” Annie said. “Soc­cer is my back­ground, so even though they’re younger than me, they’re my heroes. That’s incredible.”

And if you can’t make it to Com­merce City, the par­ty at Lady Jus­tice Brew­ing sounds as if it’s gear­ing up to be the next best thing. There’ll be items on-hand show­cas­ing the bar to come, as well as give­aways and a fundrais­er.

As for the site itself, well …

“It’s start­ing to look like a sports bar,” Weaver laughed.

“There’s no instruc­tion man­u­al for this,” Spencer added. “There’s no ‘Open­ing A Bar For Dum­mies’ (book). We’re learn­ing. Every sin­gle day, we’re learn­ing two things while we also don’t know 15 things. Our list is con­stant­ly grow­ing. The real cool thing is, with­in the women’s sports bar com­mu­ni­ty, every­one is will­ing to help.”

They’ll toast the 24ers Sat­ur­day, even from afar. To every door they’ve kicked open. And to every door that’s got it coming.

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