"The United States men's national team has reached the knockout stage round of 16 in the World Cup for the first time in over two decades, causing soccer fever around the country. For Rainbow Wahine head coach Michelle Nagamine, an avid Team USA fan herself, who has traveled a number of times to attend the World Cup over the years, identifies that the excitement for the sport can provide an assist in interest ahead of next month's start to the season. As the Lady Bows represent the highest level of soccer in the state. I think anytime you get soccer on a national stage and an international stage like this, it can only help our game. So I'm hoping that all the rabid fans who have been texting me about this game is bananas, what's going on, I hope that really does continue through our season with us getting into a new conference and new opponents and different challenges. We're going to be a very fun team to watch and I just really hope that the soccer fever continues. You bring up being in a new conference. How excited are you about that move from the Big West to the Mountain West? A lot of new opponents, a lot of new travel, new destinations. How exciting of a time is this? It's a very, very exciting time for us. If we look at the years that we had in the Big West, we really had a great conference there with teams that went deep into the NCAAs many, many years in a row. And then now moving into a different conference, it just represents a different set of challenges which we are trying to tell the kids. It's really about opportunity, getting to showcase our university in a different region, different demographics. It's going to be such a huge, huge opportunity for us to gain a bunch of new fans and then still maintain our connections with our fans in California as well. Rainbow Wahine will open their 2026 season on Thursday, August 13th against Texas Tech at the WIPO Soccer Stadium. As for Team USA, they'll face Belgium in the World Cup's round of 16 Monday at 2 p.m. Hawaii time right here on KHON2."