Seattle's history of professional sports began in 1915 with the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA)'s Seattle Metropolitans, the first American ice hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. Seattle's professional sports culture currently includes seven major professional teams and many teams in minor leagues. Seattle also boasts a strong history in collegiate sports, with two National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I universities and one NCAA Division II university. Major professional teams At 4.1 million residents in 2022, Greater Seattle is now the 15th-largest (between metro Detroit at 4.4 million and the Twin Cities at 3.7 million) metropolitan area in the United States. Rapid 21st-century population growth in the counties surrounding the City of Seattle (King County; Pierce County, Washington and Snohomish County) and the satellite cities in these counties (Bellevue, WA; Tacoma, WA and Everett, WA) has quickly expanded both the variety and the level of talent in professional sports teams residing in the Puget Sound region. Professional soccer in Seattle has always involved the Seattle Sounders, whose original team played in the defunct NASL in the 1970s through to its demise in 1983. The name lived on in a second incarnation of the team, which played in the second level of US soccer from 1994 through 2008. In November 2007, Major League Soccer announced that Seattle would host the league's fifteenth franchise to start play in 2009. The team held a vote among its fan base for the team's name between March 27 and 31, 2008 and Seattle Sounders FC was chosen. The current version of the Sounders plays at Lumen Field. In 1976, the NFL's Seattle Seahawks began play. The Seahawks played at the Kingdome until its implosion in 2000. The Seahawks now play in Lumen Field. In 1977, following years of legal wrangling over the move of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee (to become the Milwaukee Brewers), the MLB awarded Seattle a new baseball franchise, the Seattle Mariners. From 1977 the Mariners played in the Kingdome until mid-season 1999 when the team moved across the street to what is now known as T-Mobile Park, where they continue to play today. The WNBA's Seattle Storm arrived in Seattle in 2000, and played at KeyArena through the 2018 season. After KeyArena was closed for its reconfiguration as today's Climate Pledge Arena, the Storm split their 2019 home games between Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett and Alaska