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Oracle Park is more than just a ballpark to Bay FC players Leah Freeman and Joelle Anderson. It’s the backdrop of their childhoods.

“I fully grew up in that stadium,” said Freeman, who was raised in Berkeley and often attended San Francisco Giants games. “My family has been season ticket-holders since my dad was a kid … since the Candlestick days.”

She doesn’t remember her first game — because she was only two months old — but the waterfront park quickly became the site of some of her favorite sports memories. Freeman recalls watching Pablo Sandoval smash three home runs in Game 1 of the 2012 World Series, celebrating three championships in five years, and traveling into the city to catch Giants games during high school.

For Anderson, who grew up in San Jose, the connection is just as deep. She started going to games around age five with her Giants-loving family and turned the ballpark into her personal playground.

“I remember riding down the Coca Cola slide and running the bases. There are so many memories there with my friends and family,” Anderson said. 

On Saturday, the duo returns to Oracle Park, this time as the athletes who thousands of fans will flock to see. Freeman and Anderson are a goalkeeper and midfielder, respectively, for the BayFC women’s soccer team, which debuted in the National Women’s Soccer League as an expansion club last season. 

For a pair of childhood Giants fans in Freeman and Anderson, Saturday’s matchup is a true full-circle moment. 

It’s also one that reflects the very vision Bay FC was built on: celebrating local roots, elevating women’s sports, and uniting the Bay Area around soccer. 

The ballpark at China Basin has hosted thousands of major league baseball games, college football bowls, an MLS match, and even a local high school football championship, but Saturday’s game between Bay FC and the Washington Spirit marks the first time women’s sports teams have ever played at Oracle Park. 

Bay FC CEO Brady Stewart described the Bay Area as “the preeminent destination of women’s soccer in the world.” The region's reputation was built on the strength of competitive youth clubs, the storied college programs at Stanford, Cal, and Santa Clara, and local legends-turned-national team stars such as San Jose's Brandi Chastain and Santa Clara's Michelle Akers. That legacy was unmistakable on the global stage at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, where 35% of the U.S. Women’s National Team roster had ties to the Bay Area. 

Today, the Bay Area is no longer just a cradle for young talent — it has become a true pipeline to the pros. The club’s current roster features seven players with direct ties to the Bay Area, whether through hometown roots or college careers. It’s no coincidence, either, as this is a deliberate part of the club’s identity. 

“We are the Bay, and we want to bring our players home to play in front of their friends and families, and to represent the Bay like we do,” Stewart said. 

Freeman is among the newest. She inked her first professional contract with Bay FC in late July, just ahead of the second half of the season, following an impressive collegiate career split between Oregon and Duke. For her, that moment was more than just a launch — it was a homecoming.

“I’m doing what I want to do and am surrounded by amazing people … and it was never a thought when I was in third grade wanting to play professional soccer that I could be doing it in a place that means so much to me,” Freeman said.

She played at Berkeley High School and for Mustang Soccer Club in Danville, and sharpened her instincts at East Bay Goalkeeping under the expert eye of Cal’s goalkeeper coach Cori Callahan. It was Alex Morgan and the Cal women’s soccer team, back when Freeman was in the third grade, who helped initiate it all. Regular trips to cheer on her mother’s alma mater planted the seeds of inspiration for Freeman as she went on to forge her own path as a homegrown player in the East Bay’s soccer scene. 

Anderson grew up on a different side of the Bay, and had just as much access to elite talent. She regularly attended Stanford women’s soccer games, and saw stars such as Kelley O’Hara and Christen Press light up the pitch. That exposure, paired with nearly a decade of development at De Anza Force — one of the country’s premier youth clubs — helped build her into a technically polished and fundamentally sound player from a young age.

The Pepperdine product spent her first two seasons in the NWSL with the Houston Dash, but just before the start of her third professional season, Anderson received a phone call from her general manager: a trade was in the works. The news wasn’t just surprising — it was emotional. 

“When they told me I was traded back home it was just so many emotions,” Anderson recalled. “It’s the community that raised me to be the player and person that I am today.”

Back in the Bay as a part of the club’s inaugural roster, Anderson experienced a past-meets-present feeling. 

“It’s just so cool to be able to come back home and be that role model for little girls growing up in the Bay Area because it’s the same position I was in when I was a little girl. But now, they can see me and I get to be that role model for them.” 

In its earliest days, Bay FC has worked diligently to build local roots. Rookie forward Karlie Lema played at Live Oak High just a half hour south of the team’s home stadium, PayPal Park, before continuing her career at Cal. Kiki Pickett made her mark at Stanford entering the NWSL in 2021. Veteran defender Abby Dahlkemper, a former USWNT regular who starred at Sacred Heart Prep, also returned to her roots in Menlo Park after nearly a decade of playing professionally across the country and abroad. 

Now, these players have the chance to become the hometown heroes they never had growing up, but more importantly, to help build something lasting — they are laying the foundation for future generations of Bay Area girls to aim even higher and see a place for themselves in the professional game. 

“Women’s soccer wasn’t huge when I was growing up. We didn’t have a lot of role models to look up to,” Anderson said. “It’s been amazing to see how much it has grown in the Bay Area since I was a little girl.” 

“In showing young girls that this is something that exists, and exists so close to them, I hope it helps the next generation to dream even bigger,” Freeman said.

That drea, will come into focus this weekend. Fourteen months after playing against the Chicago Stars at Wrigley Field in a match that drew an NWSL-record 35,038 fans, Bay FC has the chance to shatter that mark in San Francisco at a match designed to showcase how far women’s soccer has come.  

For Anderson and the entire club, the significance of this milestone is crystal clear. It signals a new era for the sport locally — and nationally. She calls it “a historic day for the Bay Area and for women’s sports.” 

“It speaks to the fact that everyone does watch women’s sports when they are accessible and there are enough seats in the house,” Freeman said.