Police Officer Charlene Colorundo never found much to talk about with other parents at the PTA meetings in her sons’ elementary school: Her tales of perpetrators and arrests didn’t translate well into bake-sale chitchat in suburban Northport on Long Island.

It wasn’t much different among her mostly male colleagues in the police force, as Officer Colorundo had a hard time finding friends who could relate to her life as a woman police officer and a mother of three.

That changed seven years ago, when she joined a scrappy group of women who were pulling together the first NYPD women’s soccer team.

“It’s the first time I can say I’ve had women that I felt were my friends from the job,” Officer Colorundo, a 14-year veteran who works in the West Village, said. “We know what each other go through. I’m a mom, I go to my kids’ school, and I don’t know them. I can’t relate to them.”

In its seven years, the team has evolved gradually from its most humble beginnings: a one-woman lineup consisting of Police Officer Joan Davis, who used to travel along with the three NYPD men’s soccer teams to tournaments and beg to play on women’s police teams from other cities.

After hanging fliers around police headquarters and some precincts, Officer Davis gathered a loose-knit crew of girls, as they call each other, to travel with her. For several years they played valiantly and lost miserably to well-funded Canadian teams and local college-age women. Sergeant Cindy Stimpfel, who helps manage the team, says they did best at indoor soccer, which requires fewer players.

“When we first started playing, we were the scrub team. We would show up, and it was like they were happy to see New York, but we were barely holding it together,” Officer Colorundo said.

They did, though, partly for love of the game, and partly because of the close ties they were building with other policewomen — a rare opportunity for many of them.

The proportion of women in the NYPD has been rising, but remains small, at 17.5%, while the number of policewomen overall has dropped slightly in recent years as the total police force has shrunk.

The women on the soccer team work in units scattered around the city, including public housing patrols and the counterterrorism division, and include patrol officers, detectives, and sergeants. Police Officer Sue Cronin, 26, is one of six women among 138 men at her Staten Island precinct.

“I wouldn’t know anybody here,” she said of the women’s soccer team, adding: “I don’t go on vacation. This is my vacation.”

The team members now sacrifice up to three quarters of their vacation days each year to travel together to tournaments in locations ranging from Maryland to Amsterdam.

“We’ve tried to practice, but everyone works different tours, and different days a week, and in different boroughs,” Officer Colorundo said.

Nevertheless, the NYPD girls have gotten into a rhythm, and teams that had beaten them in the past began losing goals to them this year. In one tournament, they tied the women’s police team from Calgary, Canada, which beat them by five goals last year.

The real turning point for the team came last month in Belgium, at an international tournament that included only a few other women police officers and a number of professional European soccer players. They were intimidated, but decided to stick it out. In the first round, the NYPD women lost two matches, tied two, but managed to win three, taking them to the final round. They were matched with Belgium, the undefeated hostesses of the tournament.

In a shootout, the NYPD girls defeated Belgium, taking them to the final match.

“Who would have known we would be in the championship for first place? We are just a bunch of NYC cops playing soccer,” Officer Colorundo wrote in an e-mail message after the trip.

They lost in the final against a Russian team, but were elated at how far they got. With the momentum of the wins, the women are hoping to attract more players and perhaps even find a sponsor to fund their uniforms.

“The team is in the middle of becoming a greater, bigger thing,” Officer Colorundo said. “It’s the best thing about this job.”