US women’s soccer team celebrate World Cup victory in NYC parade — PHOTOS

NEW YORK — Screams and a blizzard of confetti cheered the World Cup winning U.S. women’s soccer players as they rolled up New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes” on Friday in the first ticker-tape parade honoring a women’s sports team.

“U-S-A, U-S-A,” chanted thousands waving American flags as the parade began moving north from lower Manhattan, cheered by a crowd thick with girls decked out in soccer socks and star-spangled headbands.

“I’m the next Hope Solo,” read a sign held by 9-year-old Jaeleigh Tuccille, a beaming, curly-haired girl from Neptune, New Jersey hugged by her mother.

“It’s not just a win for them, it’s a win for all female athletes,” said Tori Klevan, 18, who came from Philadelphia with her fellow soccer players wearing red, white and blue hats and waving a cutout of the champion team midfielder Megan Rapinoe.

The United States defeated Japan 5-2 in the FIFA Women’s World Cup final on Sunday in Vancouver, Canada, the third time the U.S. women have won the title of world champions.

The victorious women’s team joins the ranks of Apollo astronauts, foreign monarchs and baseball’s New York Yankees in being honored with a parade and a granite marker on Broadway in lower Manhattan.

In addition, the 408-foot spire of One World Trade Center, built on the site where hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, will be lit up in red, white and blue on Friday night, said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

During the day, at the northern tip of Manhattan, the world’s largest free-flying American flag flew from the George Washington Bridge.

Applauding the parade was a group of self-proclaimed soccer moms from East Brunswick, New Jersey, hometown of the U.S. team’s midfielder Heather O’Reilly, who said the next hurdle for women athletes is equal pay.

“Parade first, then the money,” said Lynne Dunbar, 62.

Next week in Congress, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont will introduce a resolution calling on the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to immediately eliminate gender pay inequity between male and female athletes.

The last woman athlete to be honored with a ticker tape parade was Olympic figure skating champion Carol Heiss Jenkins in 1960.

The New York tradition began in 1886, when people who worked in skyscrapers threw ticker tape - ribbons of white paper on which stock information was recorded in those days - onto a parade celebrating the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.

With stock information now computerized, ticker tape has been replaced with shredded office paper and confetti. On Thursday, the Downtown Alliance neighborhood group delivered about two tons of shredded paper to more than 50 buildings and tenants along the parade route, a fraction of the paper that will be used.

The City of New York Department of Sanitation cleaned up more than 34 tons of paper after the New York Giants of the National Football League had its Super Bowl victory parade in 2012. The department will deploy 400 extra sanitation employees to clear debris on Friday.

The parade will cost the city $1.5 million and will use $450,000 in private donations.