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It was the eve of the USWNT/Brazil quarterfinals match and I was a nervous wreck. The team had just gotten steamrolled by Sweden. A horrifically demoralizing defeat against Brazil seemed imminent. They had Marta. The U.S.’ star striker, meanwhile, had scored a grand total of two international goals in the calendar year up to then.

History was bound to repeat itself. Another 4-0 shellacking seemed inevitable.

I spent the night emotionally preparing myself for a match that would surely result in the U.S.’ earliest elimination in Women’s World Cup history. It was all going to be over in a matter of hours.

My friend just didn’t get it.

“Nervous? Why are you nervous?” she asked incredulously.

“Because a U.S. win just wouldn’t make sense,” I rebutted as visions of Josefine Oqvist’s blazing runs right through the heart of the U.S. defense remained painfully fresh in my mind.

“But you can’t overthink these things,” she said, “You just have to have blind faith in your team.”

Now’s the time to point out that she’s a New York Mets fan, which may help to explain the unwavering and perhaps misplaced optimism.

“Listen, I don’t start off every season thinking that the Mets are going to end the season with the worst record in baseball. I mean, I know that’s highly possible, very likely in fact, but it doesn’t mean I think about it. That’s cynicism. You just always have to believe in your team. With sports, you never know what’s going to happen. That’s what’s most fun.”

After our little squabble, Abby Wambach went on to score that last-gasp (ESPY-winning) header, the U.S. would then defeat Brazil in penalties, flatten France in the final twenty minutes of the semifinal, and then lose to Japan in the team’s first World Cup final in 12 years.

There’s no way she could have known that any of that stuff was about to happen, which pretty much proved her point.

Maybe it’s time to start feeling that way about WPS now. On the face of things, it just wouldn’t really make sense for WPS to, you know, dodge the bullet that’s seemingly been barreling towards it for months (if not years) now.

Attendances have been pitiful. Mainstream media coverage of things other than one megalomaniacal owner’s apparent vanity project is virtually non-existent. A business model unlike anything seen in countries with established soccer cultures and stable women’s semi-pro leagues looks flawed. Rumors abound regarding the departure of a title sponsor of two after season’s end.

It’s not nice to admit, but the last few months have felt a little like what happens when you emotionally disengage from a relationship you know is headed for the rails. It’s not the actual breaking up bit that hurts the most; it’s the time afterwards in which you’re haunted by wistful memories about how nice things once were and what possibly could have been. And struggling to find how to fill the void created by the absence of that special thing in your thing. That part really sucks.

And then you have a night like Wednesday and things suddenly don’t seem so dire.

The highly anticipated World Cup bump looks to be legitimate, for now at least. A total of 15,404 people packed out Sahlen’s Sports Park in Rochester, New York to watch the Western New York Flash defeat magicJack 3-1. It was the best-attended match in the history of both WPS and the stadium itself. That’s on par with what DC United drew that very night.

For perspective, WPS has had six total matches so far this month. The cumulative attendance total for those half a dozen games is 13,716 – 1,688 people fewer than the total attracted for that single game.

Despite not playing, Abby Wambach addressed her hometown crowd to thank them for their support during the World Cup. Fourteen other players that had represented their respective countries at the World Cup were honored before kick-off. Other than Wambach, Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan drew the most vociferous cheers. A chorus of “Alex! Morgan!” chants were audible from the moment she jumped off the bench up to the final whistle. (Wasn’t able to spot any hot pink sports bras/white jersey combos, though).

The game was good, too. Christine Sinclair hardly put a foot wrong as she helped guide the Flash to their first victory in almost exactly a month with two goals and an assist. Ella Masar’s acrobatic volley was also fun. And Ashlyn Harris made a fine one-handed save at the outset.

The match may have featured a handful of players still recovering from the rigors of a World Cup, but the quality of the play wasn’t really diminished at all. The performances by Becky Edwards, Beverly Goebel, Whitney Engen, McCall Zerboni, and Sarah Huffman made one remember that the World Cup wasn’t the only place home to high-level talent (seriously, was Beverly Goebel always this good?).

Perhaps best yet, the match was available to wider audiences thanks to FSC’s last-minute decision to air the match after acknowledging rounds of requests from fans. Hopefully those who tuned in to a WPS game for the very first time liked what they saw and understand that a.) this was a local broadcast, thus the lower-than-normal production standards and b.) we’re just three days removed from the World Cup, thus the competition was a bit “watered down”.

It was a heartening night.

WPS’s hopes for a potential World Cup lift were almost exclusively tied to the success of the USWNT. Because the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup and WPS belong to different networks, there was no natural promotional tie-in between the two. That, and full-scale marketing campaigns that would make that link between good national team players and their good domestic league cost money, which doesn’t quite jive with WPS’ model of extreme austerity.

Fortunately, the league’s “See Extraordinary Heroes” campaign – which, not to sound glib, essentially amounts to a nice catch phrase and some fireworks after matches – looks to have a shot at success, thanks in large part to the USWNT’s exhilarating romp through the World Cup, and the amount of bona fide legitimacy the Women’s World Cup earned around the world.

The USWNT on Tuesday took part in an all-out media blitz, and much has been made about the fact that nary a mention was made about WPS during any of the players’ interviews. It’s fair to say that WPS and U.S. Soccer have a weird working relationship with one another, and always have. Perhaps the players were still in full USWNT mode (that’s what the interviews were premised on anyway), or maybe they were simply not “encouraged” to bring up stuff about their teams, which seems unfair because those WPS teams are also their employers, too. Who knows what that was all about.

Either way, the USWNT certainly did much of WPS’s bidding in Germany. Newfound fans who may have now have enough of a passing interest to Wikipedia, say, Hope Solo’s name are probably now aware that she plays for magicJack. Information is so widely dispersed and easily accessible today, anyway. Maybe Philadelphians or Bostonians or Floridians, etc. that got swept up in the pageantry of the World Cup will now take advantage of the fact that a lot of these world class players play in their own backyards.

It’s now just a matter of turning passing interest into consistent support. This weekend’s Atlanta Beat’s match against magicJack looks posed to sell out while the Boston Breakers’ sales for their fixture against the Flash also look to be tracking well.

The big question is whether this heighted level of interest can be maintained throughout the last third of the season. And beyond that, new faces at the turnstiles is always helpful, but it’s new faces with checkbooks in hand that might be what matters most. Investment is key.

But as of today, there looks to be some true cause for optimism. It’s been years since that phrase last rung true.

And hell, with 97 total games played so far, the New York Mets aren’t even last in their division.

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