Before the first leg of the Vancouver Whitecaps' CONCACAF Champions Cup semifinal against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, supporters stretched banners across one end of BC Place.
"You allowed us to dream again,” one said.
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Vancouver Whitecaps defender Ranko Veselinović (4) and forward Damir Kreilach (19) celebrate after defeating Inter Miami in a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Vancouver Whitecaps head coach Jesper Sorensen watches during the second half of a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match against Inter Miami, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Vancouver Whitecaps fans cheer after a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match between Inter Miami and the Vancouver Whitecaps, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The Vancouver Whitecaps celebrate after a goal by forward Daniel Ríos against Minnesota United during the second half of an MLS soccer match Sunday, April 27, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
The fan sentiment expressed in the tifo has spilled over to the Major League Soccer season as the Whitecaps defy expectations.
“I don't know if I've really been a part of such a close locker room before. Everyone who has come in in the last couple of years has said the same thing, and I think that speaks volumes," top scorer Brian White said. "And I think you see that on the field, how close this group is.”
While it's still early, the Whitecaps sit atop MLS with a 7-1-2 record. They've allowed just seven goals, tied for fewest in the league, while scoring 20, tied for most.
White, a new Jersey native who joined Vancouver in 2021, has six total goals and was named the MLS Player of the Month for April. He scored four of those goals in a mid-month match against Austin.
Across all competitions this year, the Whitecaps have lost just twice in 18 total games.
“This group of guys is amazing, and it's not just to say that, I really believe it,” said Serbian defender Ranko Veselinović, who has been with Vancouver since 2020. “All the guys are on the same page, we work with each other, we have good relationships. That's the foundation for success and I think this year we can do special things.”
The fast start stands in contrast to Vancouver's more recent history.
Last season, the Whitecaps finished eighth in the standings and routed the Portland Timbers 5-0 in a wild-card game. But they fell to LAFC in the first round of the playoffs.
The Whitecaps have qualified for the playoffs in three of the past five years but haven't advanced out of the first round in that span. Since the team joined the league in 2011, the furthest they've gone in the playoffs is the quarterfinals, in 2015 and 2017.
Coach Vanni Sartini was fired in late November after three seasons at the helm, and Vancouver didn't name his replacement — Danish coach Jesper Sorensen — until mid-January.
Adding to the offseason upheaval was the announcement the Whitecaps were for sale. Greg Kerfoot has been owner of the club since 2002, when it was part of the North American Soccer League. Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett and former NBA star Steve Nash joined Kerfoot in 2008, and the Whitecaps became part of MLS in 2011.
A new owner has not emerged, and there are concerns among the fanbase that the team could be moved.
But in the meantime, the Whitecaps keep winning. Vancouver's rise has grabbed attention because of the 5-1 aggregate victory over Inter Miami that sent the Whitecaps through to the Champions Cup final at Cruz Azul on June 1.
Much has been made about the star-studded Miami team's failure — but Vancouver demonstrated its newfound resurgence with its 3-1 second-leg victory on Miami's home turf. White and Pedro Vite scored goals just two minutes apart to open the second half before Sebastian Berhalter added a third in the 71st minute.
Cruz Azul downed Tigres 2-1 on aggregate in the other semifinal to win a spot in the final. Should the Whitecaps defeat the Liga MX club, they would qualify for a spot in the 2029 Club World Cup and this summer's Intercontinental Cup.
“We’re dreamers, you know,” Berhalter said. “Why not? We’re a small market club. But why not? Why not win the whole thing?"
There's also the MLS season. The Whitecaps host Real Salt Lake on Saturday.
“The sky's the limit to what we can achieve this year,” White said. “Hopefully, we stay healthy, stay humble, know where we come from, believe in ourselves and continue to push hard.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Vancouver Whitecaps defender Ranko Veselinović (4) and forward Damir Kreilach (19) celebrate after defeating Inter Miami in a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Vancouver Whitecaps head coach Jesper Sorensen watches during the second half of a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match against Inter Miami, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Vancouver Whitecaps fans cheer after a CONCACAF Champions Cup second-leg semifinal soccer match between Inter Miami and the Vancouver Whitecaps, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The Vancouver Whitecaps celebrate after a goal by forward Daniel Ríos against Minnesota United during the second half of an MLS soccer match Sunday, April 27, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
