Bay FC fans take delay in stride, rewarded with victory in franchise’s

LOS ANGELES — With banging drums and booming chants from the Angel City faithful a few feet away, Emma Mamis stood side by side with a handful of people donning Bay FC jerseys. Some Angel City jerseys mixed in, too, but they all wore the same bracelet.

A friendship bracelet with black, pink, blue and white beads, attached by two soccer-ball-shaped beads, rested on Mamis’ left wrist while the small-but-loyal contingent of Bay FC fans who call themselves the Bridge Brigade mingled with the Angel City supporters group, Valkyries, who were welcoming the new expansion team’s fans to the league ahead of Sunday’s 1-0 Bay FC victory over Angel City FC.

“There is a sense of community in women’s sports,” Mamis said. “People want to be a part of that, and they want you to be a part of it with them, and that’s what it has felt like being a Bay FC fan.”

Bay FC’s debut match was supposed to happen about 24 hours earlier, but three weeks ago, Angel City announced that a conflict on March 16 would force the game to be pushed a day later. For fans who already had made travel arrangements, that made for a tricky time.

But the Bridge Brigade, Bay FC’s official supporters’ group, intends to have a presence at every match, and the first one was especially important. So the wheels got turning on how to make its mark on the franchise’s first match, with an assist from its rival club.

“It was really important for us to be here,” said Bay FC fan and Stanford grad student Grace Maddocks, who drove to the game. “Our community in the bay has been Bay FC before they even existed.”

Maddocks could barely sleep the night before she and her partner Sam Peterson made the trek from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to be among the handful of supporters against the backdrop of Angel City pink and black. She and Peterson drove home right after the game.