Category: Thorns
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Disclosure: Jennifer Ingraham, a 107ist board member, also serves as a copy editor for Rose City Review. She was not involved in the creation of this piece in any way.
On June 1, Milo Reed published a post on Medium, detailing his experiences as a Black capo in the Timbers Army and member of the 107 Independent Supporters Trust—the nonprofit organization that coordinates both the TA and the Rose City Riveters.
Reed describes an instance from 2018, in which the 107IST Board of Directors deleted a blog post that they, a group of non-Black people, deemed to be offensive to the Black community. However, Reed, “felt that the post was not problematic & urged the 107ist board to consult communities of color before speaking for them.” He also requested the Board share a copy of his email; Reed points out that, a couple of months later, a white capo was allowed to share their own thoughts about race “on the same website [Reed] was denied access to.”
According to Reed’s post, the Board asked him to explain his requests to them at their next meeting, less than 48 hours in advance. Based on the context of the invitation, Reed believed it to be “disingenuous” and “like [the meeting] was going to be an interrogation as opposed to a conversation.”
“I can’t count the number of times I have brought a plan, concern, or proposal to a 107ist board member only to be given a metaphorical pat on the head, a terse rejection or worst of all ignored,” writes Reed. “This has only intensified in the last couple of months. I have told several people they have behaved in ways that were disrespectful & patronizing since March, only to be told ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.'”
Three days after Reed published his story, the 107IST Board shared a response, acknowledging their failure to listen to BIPOC voices in the TA and RCR—although doing so without explicitly mentioning Reed or his own blog—and declaring a commitment to publicize a detailed anti-racism plan within the next 30 days.
Reed’s post came in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, in the midst of global protests against police brutality and systemic racism and calls that Black lives matter. (“If Black Lives Matter what about Black voices?” Reed asks.)
The outcry—and wave of public statements from their Black members—has pressured many organizations to examine the role of race within the spaces they inhabit.
When examining the role of racism within these spaces, it’s important to first acknowledge that we live in a society that’s systems of power and organization were created by white people who often strove to exclude people of color. Whether through the institution of slavery, segregationist policy, or simply hostile attitudes that targeted BIPOC, they conveyed that people of color were not welcome.
Although many of these laws have been repealed, these spaces cannot be separated from their racist origins. When those in charge do not attempt to reconcile with and actively combat this racist past, those same systems of inequity remain unchecked. We see them perpetuated in the racial wage gap, in the small number of people of color—especially Black and Indigenous people, especially Black and Indigenous women—that hold leadership positions in companies, in the over-policing and mass incarceration of BIPOC, and in countless other areas of everyday life. As Simone Charley points out, these “power structures [are] so ingrained in society that to question them is to question yourself.”
Like many organizations across the United States, the TA and the 107IST are a product of the society that they belong to. Regardless of self-proclaimed anti-racism and anti-fascism, members not immune to intrinsic bias; Reed’s story shows as much. And, as tends to be the case with systemic racism, his experience is not an isolated occurrence.
“When I first moved to Portland in 2016, I didn’t know a single person there,” says Chelsea Waddell, a member of the 107IST, “definitely not anyone in the soccer community.” She recalls going to the 107IST website and reading about the group. Something stuck out to her on the 107IST’s “About Us” page: “We have always said that if you want to be Timbers Army then you already are […] Since 2013, the same has been true for the Rose City Riveters.”
“I was like, wow, what a cool sentiment,” Waddell says. “You don’t have to be anyone special or do anything to be part of this organization.
“I think you’re immediately accepted when you walk into that group,” she continues. “There’s no prior judgment of who you are because of who you are. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, which I am, and a person of color and a woman—I’m really hitting the triple threat there—you can walk in and really be embraced, but I feel like only if you agree with everybody else all the way through.”
Anabel Ramirez, who was a regular presence in the North End for roughly ten years, feels similarly about her experience in the TA. “I got hooked into it,” she says. “It felt like a cult fervor when you first join in, and you want everything: you want all the scarves, you want all the patches, you know all the chants. You get really clicked into this idea that it is a collective, and then it doesn’t feel so collective in certain aspects.”
Both Ramirez and Waddell believe that this sense of collectiveness is enforced by the unspoken expectations in the TA, and, to a lesser extent, the Riveters: standing and chanting together, cheering on the team, and staying off your phone. For those involved outside of games, it’s volunteering your time and money, helping in the creation of tifos, and contributing to 107IST fundraisers for other nonprofits around Portland.
However, unspoken rules can lead those who are unaware of them, or simply wish to express their support in a different way, to feel as if they don’t belong. This is only accentuated for BIPOC fans who are already navigating a very white space.
“In trying to be this cohesive North End voice, they stamp out a lot of other voices,” Ramirez observes. “I don’t think a lot of them see themselves as stamping out specifically Black and Brown and Asian voices, but it happens.”
Ramirez points to the fact that many of her BIPOC friends don’t feel welcome in the TA—from those who simply don’t want to acknowledge the group after they displayed the Sunshine Flag, to the large numbers of Latinx families who show up at Timbers 2 matches, but not Timbers games. She, herself, felt uncomfortable in the TA unless she was with a certain group of friends.
As a Black woman, Waddell perceives the racial diversity of the TA and RCR to be similar to that of Portland, a city that is known for being very white.
To Jake Payne and Phil Bridges, this problem isn’t exclusive to Portland. The two are co-founders of Black Fires, a Black supporters group for both the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Red Stars. “You see this with a lot of supporters groups around the league,” Payne points out, “of saying that you’re inclusive and diverse, but your stands don’t really reflect that. I think that’s something that more than Section 8 or Timbers Army or anyone need to look at […] like, okay, if we’re that inclusive, why don’t our stands reflect what our values are?”
Bridges points to the fact that, in Chicago, it took over 20 years for a real push to make the stands more diverse—both in terms of LGBT and BIPOC fans—to actually happen. “You have just a lot of people who love the idea of saying that they’re diverse,” he says. “They love the idea of that, they seem open, they love talking about it, they love feeling that way, but when it comes to actually putting in the work to make sure that happens, it’s totally different.”
One of the factors is how a club markets itself. “There is the reality of soccer’s not as big as it should be in the Black community in the United States,” Payne acknowledges. On the other hand, he notes that Chicago’s clubs weren’t actively trying to engage with the Black community until Black Fires called on them to do so.
“It’s really liberating to be able to make the experience what you’ve always wanted it to be,” says Payne, “but it’s also very frustrating, because you have to constantly almost drag people to care about this in a genuine way.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the ways Black Fires was working to reach prospective fans was through watching games with them. Payne explains that the majority of the bars that Fire supporters frequent are in the north side of the city, which is more white. “What’s a bar [where] we can watch in the south side?” he asks. “What’s a bar where we can watch that’s Black-owned or in a Black neighborhood, so that we can be more present?”
Payne thinks this engagement is an important step beyond a trap that many fall into—fans or otherwise. Too often, he points out, “donating takes the place of actually reaching out to communities that need it and making a connection.”
Both Ramirez and Waddell notice this within the TA and RCR. “I don’t feel like they are actively fighting for people of color,” Waddell says. “I think they are passively allowing them to be a part of it, and openly embracing different people, but never going any deeper than that.”
As an example, she and Ramirez point to the 107IST’s donation drives for other nonprofits in Portland.
“I do think that the organization can be a little bit show-y, white savior-y, performative,” acknowledges Waddell. “In football culture, being antifascist and fighting for marginalized people is really, really cool, but I feel like we do it just because it’s cool […] There’s just not a lot of substance there.
“It doesn’t really matter if you can fly a certain flag or wear or display a certain symbol if you’re not doing other things to support that fight. It’s just a symbol.”
In her time with the 107IST Outreach Committee, Ramirez notes that the group would donate to organizations without making any effort to engage with the communities that those organizations represented. She explains that this was one of the main reasons she ended up leaving the committee. At the time, Ramirez said as much to the 107IST, but didn’t feel like anyone was paying attention.
“I feel like every time I would go and try to make a suggestion of some sort—it was either because I was female or because I was Latina or probably the combo—that I wasn’t getting listened to,” she says.
For Waddell, this failure to listen to BIPOC voices became evident during the discourse around the Iron Front last summer. “Obviously, this was a really passion-driven discussion, but from where I sit, part of that fight was to ‘protect’ me,” she says. “I feel like there was no space given to the people that people were fighting for.
“I just, as a person of color, didn’t see how displaying a symbol would change anything for me,” Waddell explains. “I think that’s kind of the discussion we’re at this summer, on a bigger scale, is that it’s not displaying a symbol that makes people feel safer; it’s action and words and listening to them.” While she wanted to express this at the time, she was afraid of the backlash she would face for presenting an opinion that differed from the group’s.
That fear of retaliation was validated by Reed’s post, by his stories of trying to speak up and the resistance he faced. “It was brave of him to even try,” Waddell says, “and still no one listened.”
When Reed was offered an opportunity to communicate with the 107IST Board, it was on short notice and in a space of the Board’s own creation. “[It’s] like, ‘yeah, we will listen to you,'” describes Payne, “‘but only in these predefined structures that we feel work, this is how we’ll listen to you.'”
Payne acknowledges that a refusal to listen to BIPOC voices unless they’re speaking in white-created spaces is a systemic issue: “I think that’s how a lot of places operate, not just in soccer, and it’s just not right.”
To Payne, now is a perfect time to examine the ways in which any organization perpetuates systemic racial inequity—intentionally or not. “[The] Timbers Army is just in the spotlight because they had the most public thing about it,” he says. “Plenty of other groups operate like this right now, and I think this is a good time—with it being a ‘break in society,’ with not many supporter initiatives happening—for any group, NWSL, MLS, USL, to really be thinking about, ‘okay, how are we operating?’ Especially the older groups, like Timbers Army or like Section 8: ‘this is how we’ve been operating, but is it the right way to operate?’ I think that really needs to be a big question going forward.”
“We are […] evaluating the different committees within the organization, looking to create more transparency and points of entry,” says Gabby Rosas, the newly-appointed president of the 107IST Board.
In the follow-up report from the 107IST, she shared the Board’s plan to reevaluate different areas of their operations. These include a BIPOC committee, a list of the specific places the Board is hoping to address, a summary of the outside groups the Board has formed partnerships with, and a handful of suggested books, podcasts, and movies.
“Personally, I have been reflecting on my own pathways into the organization, my own decision to run for the board, and advantages I’ve had as a white-passing person in Portland,” says Rosas, when asked about the work she’s done to examine the role of whiteness in the 107IST. “This is a large organization with many people who care passionately about the Timbers, the Thorns, supporter culture, and the community. It can be very intimidating, and I have not done a good job of recruiting and sustaining their participation, I should have been more extroverted when it comes to getting others involved in all aspects of what this organization does.”
She points to the barriers of entry that exist within the organization focusing on the time commitment asked of those involved. “There are many barriers to entry and advancement, from the supporter group involvement to the board election,” she explains. “I have been and will continue to identify barriers and address them.”
For Waddell, the hours asked of the BIPOC team was a major reason she didn’t join when invited. “I don’t really have time to volunteer to teach this Board how to just listen to people of color,” she says. “And I think there’s a lot more going on within the organization that they need to do to support people of color, but […] there’s no class you need to take or book you need to read or podcast you need to listen to to understand how to just listen to someone when they speak.”
The other factor was money. The BIPOC committee, like other 107IST committees and Board positions, is run by volunteer work. However, Waddell currently does diversity, equity, and inclusion work for her job, and felt it wasn’t worth taking on additional emotional labor—especially, for free.
The BIPOC team shares that they now have 20 members on board, 10 of whom are currently actively involved. According to the 107IST update post, the committee has met twice so far. They “plan on meeting again soon while we work on our mission statement and other tasks that include the board.”
When asked about how the member-led BIPOC committee will remain impartial in their evaluation of the 107IST, Rosas says: “Everyone’s experience with this organization is valuable, be it positive or negative, or if they are a member or non-member. We are also not opposed to working with other local groups for guidance and insight as this committee is formed.”
The committee is not following a specified timeline, but Rosas explains that the Board isn’t planning to sit around and wait. “The hope is that as we work to remove barriers for entry and highlight different pathways in our organization, we can do so in such a way that will address the needs of marginalized groups,” she says. “As we work on change, we will be doing so at a pace where we can check in with our community, including the BIPOC team, and local organizations that have offered their support. Our goal is to be able to incorporate the feedback and tasks from the BIPOC team as they want to provide it.”
One of the ways Rosas hopes to do this is by increasing the accessibility of Board meetings. “We have never had the attendance at another board meeting like we did the June meeting,” she shares, a meeting that happened virtually to accommodate for the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the 107IST is moving their monthly meetings to online, accessible spaces. Rosas points specifically to Google Meet, which offers closed-captioning.
As another area of focus, she hopes to more actively work with local organizations that serve BIPOC communities and other marginalized groups. “If we can increase our engagement, both through volunteering and by inviting them to 107ist events, we will hopefully be able to improve the accessibility to joining the Rose City Riveters, Timbers Army, and 107ist,” she says.
To open up space for BIPOC voices, former 107IST Board member Ray Terrill stepped down from his position and asked that his spot to be filled by a person of color. Sherrilynn “Sheba” Rawson also resigned her presidency to Rosas, although Rawson remains on the Board.
For Ramirez, those changes aren’t good enough. “Until there are at least three seats on the board filled by BIPOC, I don’t think they can move forward on this,” she says.
Rosas believes that we’ll see that shift later in the year. She explains that, as advised by Western States Center’s Eric Ward, many members have chosen “to not resign but to work on the changes until BIPOC appointments can be made or elected.”
Come Board elections in November and December, Rosas thinks the leadership changes will materialize. “I imagine that a number of board members will either choose to not re-run or step down at that time,” she says. “We will actively work with the BIPOC team should individuals want to join the board. We not only want BIPOC members on the board but also on all of the committees throughout the organization.”
Key to this will be accountability; the 107IST will have to prove that they’re seeking out and paying attention to BIPOC voices going forward. “I think a major way to prove the 107ist board is actually listening is to make changes based on what is heard and then to keep checking in to see if the changes have had an impact,” says Rosas. “I expect that many aspects of the change that is needed will not be one and done.”
Whether or not those changes play out in meaningful ways remains to be seen. However, BIPOC fans speaking up now hope that, this time, listening to their stories is a first step.
“I really love this organization,” says Waddell. “I love the team, every single player, everybody who’s at the games, everybody who’s watching from home. It means a lot to me, and that’s why I do want to speak about it. It’s not out of hate, it’s out of we can do better, and we need to do better, and we have the passion to be better […] I really do love this organization and these groups, and everything I’m saying is out of the understanding that we can be better. We have to.”
The Thorns settled for a 1–1 draw tonight against the Washington Spirit, with Lindsey Horan scoring a diving header off a free kick in the 69th minute, and conceding one, also on a set piece, a few minutes later. Let’s dig into what happened:
1. The Thorns are wide now
With each game in this tournament, we’ve seen a slightly different facet of the Thorns’ shiny new diamond midfield. Against North Carolina, we saw the team’s dual No. 8s, Lindsey Horan and Rocky Rodríguez, put wide defensive pressure on the opposing outside backs and No. 10s. On the offensive side, the duo succeeded in breaking the Courage’s press in the center of the field. In this game, we saw Horan and Rodríguez both spend a lot of time attacking in wide areas, with the bulk of Portland’s chances coming on crosses, especially in the first half.
A diamond midfield is often thought of as quite narrow, but not the way the Thorns are playing. Portland attempted an almost Courage-like 19 crosses, and players all up and down the field—from Meghan Klingenberg and Christen Westphal in the back, to Rodríguez and Horan, to Morgan Weaver up top—contributed in that area. Unfortunately, nobody managed to put any of those in the net—though a few came close.
The attack was less focused down the wings in the second half, with Horan finding a few penetrating passes toward Tyler Lussi. According to Mark Parsons, though, that wasn’t by design. “I think the desperateness to score meant that we were gravitating centrally,” he said after the game. “Width is key, and we’re going to get width from multiple areas. You can see from our forwards and also our midfield, and also fullbacks when the shape allows, and the buildup allows the fullbacks to push on. So it wasn’t a switch, unfortunately.”
The question here—and for once, despite my perennial (and fact-based) insistence that the Thorns don’t actually struggle to score goals, I think it’s a fair one—is who’s going to get on the end of those crosses. Horan, obviously, is an extremely dangerous header of the ball. Other than her, of the current healthy players, Lussi seems best suited to that role, but she seems to still be finding her way into this tournament. On the other hand, Portland did find 10 shots from inside the box, even if only four of them were on frame.
2. Lindsey Horan: too good?
Before the tournament started, I asked whether Horan (tonight’s Budweiser Woman of the Match) is such a dominant player that she ends up posing a problem when it comes to squad-building. At the time, I was assuming the Thorns would be using a three-woman midfield as they generally have the past few years; Rodríguez’s strong showing, along with the backing of a true No. 6 in Angela Salem, have proven that specific concern wrong.
However, I still think there’s a potential issue here. Horan is so good, in so many areas of the field, that Portland would be foolish not to let her do as much as possible. She’s been ridiculous in this tournament, the most impactful single player in any of the games she’s played. She disrupts, sets play in motion, and then moves all the way up the field with it, often ending up taking the eventual shot (or, in this game, cross). In tonight’s match, she produced the majority of the chances, took the most touches, conceded the most fouls, and scored Portland’s lone goal.
It’s been a surprise to me to see both her and Christine Sinclair—with whom there’s a similar issue, if not quite to the same extent—starting every game and playing the majority of the available minutes. Parsons says she’s in the best shape of her life and can handle this week; the Thorns also now have a full, luxurious week of no games. Sinclair, meanwhile, is famously fastidious in her recovery protocol. Regardless, I still wonder why these two players started every game, especially given the amount of squad rotation the team has otherwise undergone from day to day.
I don’t have anything particularly smart to say here, but it reminds me of this: I used to play on a rec-league softball team with a friend who was a ludicrously gifted athlete. He nominally played shortstop, but because our roster tended to be split 50-50 between what I’ll call “real athletes” and “the others,” he inevitably ended up covering half the infield. He’d catch a fly ball, tag a runner, and then sprint 40 feet to ever-so-gently toss the ball underhanded to one of the lesser mortals on the team. On top of that, his movements were graceful and beautiful to watch. When he played, we could win. When he didn’t? Things… were harder.
I don’t think winning is the Thorns’ priority in this tournament, at least not at this stage; I think getting everybody minutes and figuring out how the team functions is the point. What I wonder is whether Horan is so central to the team, because she does so much, that playing without her would be a pointless exercise. I also wonder if, in the long term, relying that much on a single talismanic player might make things harder.
In the 23rd minute of Portland’s tournament-opening loss to North Carolina, something amazing happened. It started with Steph Labbé sending an arcing pass to Debinha in the midfield. As Debinha tried to settle the bouncing ball onto the turf, Kelli Hubly—the second sidekick in the sadly defunct Midge Purce-led dance team, she of the rolled-up shorts—charged in, got her body between the ball and her opponent, and, under pressure, completed a flailing left-footed pass to Lindsey Horan.
I have watched this sequence about eight times, both in the interest of describing it accurately above, and because I love it. I find the whole thing deeply relatable.
I’ve written a lot of words about people like Horan and Christine Sinclair and Tobin Heath over the last few years, because I like watching them play. When I get the chance, I also enjoy talking to them and hearing their coaches and teammates talk about them. But Horan and Sinclair and Heath are not the same as me.
At the same time as them being different and better than me is a major reason I like watching them, sometimes it starts to feel ridiculous writing about these people and their feats. They are basically beyond my comprehension. Their brains have a fundamentally different kind of connection to their bodies than mine does, and their bodies are also quite a bit stronger and better. There’s an inherent absurdity to me not just criticizing, but making any observations at all, about someone like Lindsey Horan. It’s like congratulating a cheetah for being fast.
Hubly, though—we are at least recognizably the same species. She’s not a hyper-competitive monster like everyone at the highest level of the sport. She’s clearly talented, to have gotten this far, but she’s talented in the way regular human beings are. She made the team, and has stayed on it, by dint of honest hard work. You get the feeling watching her that she is always trying very hard.
I have this image seared into my head which I’m not even sure is real—I’ve asked our photographers and none of them remember having captured it—of Hubly having just messed something up, either given away a goal or conceded a penalty. I believe it’s 2018, because I think she’s wearing that godawful white kit with the tire tracks on it, but I might just be remembering the Thorns kit I most associate with disappointment. She may or may not be sitting on the ground. She looks absolutely shellshocked, eyes wide, jaw tense, and I’m projecting here, but to me this is the face of someone not just deeply embarrassed about what’s just happened, but also in mortal fear of the potential longer-term personal consequences.
Thinking about that image, I can feel what that’s like viscerally in my body. I don’t think many of us can really empathize with what it’s like to do something like win a World Cup. I imagine I’d feel very happy! But I can’t picture it. Feeling like you’ve just let everyone around you down and that you might also lose your job because of it, though? That I can understand.
Another thing I can understand is the much smaller-scale victory Hubly had on Saturday. She wasn’t perfect. Lynn Williams, being Lynn Williams, burned her a few times. She let some crosses in. But she had also very clearly heard and understood her instructions for the game. She judiciously applied pressure in the areas it was needed, didn’t bite when Crystal Dunn or Jaelene Daniels tried to dribble around her, sensibly cleared the ball a number of times.
In part, as Mark Parsons pointed out in a Zoom call a few days ago, she was finally playing a role she’s actually suited to, rather than being tossed in as the third center back behind Meghan Klingenberg. This is not the story of a breakout moment, about how Hubly is good enough to replace Ellie Carpenter, about how she’s going to start for the Thorns going forward. She’s always going to be a serviceable NWSL player. But you know what? That’s fucking hard. Playing multiple seasons as the fifth or sixth defender on the depth chart and still showing up to work every day with a smile on your face, ready to keep doing your best—that takes a level of tenacity I’m not sure I can relate to. We don’t appreciate what that takes enough.
When those smaller-scale victories come, for Hubly or any of the other mortals in this league, celebrate them. We’re all out here doing the best we can.
Katelyn and Tyler review the first two Thorns games of the NWSL Challenge Cup, discuss the suburban Utah masterpiece that forms its setting (including the playground), talk the Thorns diamond and their excitement about the young players on display.
In its second game in the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup, the Portland Thorns played the Chicago Red Stars to a 0-0 draw.
With both teams playing last Saturday, lineup rotation was no surprise. Only four of the players who started for the Thorns against North Carolina did so again today, while Chicago showcased a completely different starting XI.
1. Chaos is the name of the game
We saw it in yesterday’s 3-3 draw between the Utah Royals and Houston Dash: chaos is fun. Today’s match was less back-and-forth on the scoreboard—and, admittedly, a little less fun because of it—but scrappy play and all-out attacking soccer set a somewhat similar tone throughout the game.
From a very physical midfield battle with few fouls actually called to Autumn Smithers making her NWSL debut at centerback to Morgan Weaver running full-steam at Chicago’s backline, this morning’s match stood in stark contrast with last night’s build-out-of-the-back game between Sky Blue FC and OL Reign.
2. Lots of chances, finishing needs work
The Thorns got a decent number of looks on goal in the opening 20 minutes of the match, especially finding success through Weaver and Simone Charley’s wide runs. Both of Portland’s forwards found a handful of crosses in the first half, trying to find the central run of Lindsey Horan or try their own luck on frame.
Weaver had success putting Chicago’s defense under pressure with her speed, cutting inside, and beating the Red Stars backline to get on the end of through-balls, while Charley was tasked with dropping back more and beating players on the dribble.
Unfortunately, too many of Portland’s chances were directed high or straight at Chicago’s keepers, never really testing Emily Boyd or Cassie Miller.
Making runs out of midfield, Celeste Boureille looked sharper than she has in a while, threading balls ahead to Weaver and earning her own looks on goal. If she had been slightly quicker in taking those shots, that’s yet another potential scoring opportunity for Portland.
3. Christen Westphal is (almost) a solid utility defender
Earning her first start for the Thorns alongside Smithers—a player making her professional debut—and in front of a goalkeeper playing in her second ever NWSL game, Christen Westphal had a lot of defensive responsibility in this match. With two of Portland’s veteran defenders, Becky Sauerbrunn and Katherine Reynolds, sitting out the game with injuries, this game became Westphal’s chance to prove herself as a reliable depth piece.
And, for the most part, she did just that: anchoring the Thorns defensive line, finding a handful of blocks against a similarly-untested Chicago attack, and carrying that performance outside when Emily Menges came in at halftime.
However, as a team that likes to push high with wingbacks, or play out of the center with the distribution of Reynolds (or now-departed Emily Sonnett or Elizabeth Ball), Westphal’s performance left gaps to be desired. Often, she’d get on the end of balls and simply play it out rather than working her way up the field, or she’d push high to win a ball but miss the header.
Granted, Chicago wasn’t giving Portland all that much time with the ball at their feet, and granted, she’s coming off two injury-ridden seasons, but that’s something Parsons will want to see more of as Westphal earns more time in the future.
4. At some point, we’re going to have to play more than 20 minutes without Lindsey Horan
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Horan was everywhere in her time on the field. Whether she was making the run to be Portland’s target in the box or dropping back to help out Madison Pogarch or combining with Celeste Boureille in midfield, her presence was clearly felt across the pitch. And yeah, the Thorns didn’t get as much out of her as they would have liked last year, but otherwise that’s been her role throughout her time with the club.
However, we all saw how battered her shin looked after coming off for Raquel Rodríguez in the 69th minute, and at some point or other in this tournament, the Thorns are going to have to play significant time without her and without Christine Sinclair in the No. 10. Rodríguez can fill one of those roles, but not both—she may be good, but she’s only one person. Boureille showed promise stepping in at the No. 8 today, but she’s still a clear step below The Great Horan. With only three days off between this game and the next, we’ll see what Parsons pulls together.
There was a tweet today, from a certain talking head/professional troll in the soccer space, about how we’ve reached the point—four years after Colin Kaepernick lost his job for declaring his life mattered as much as those of his white teammates, four years after US Soccer prohibited its players from publicly standing with him—where athletes find it hard not to kneel for the anthem.
It’s an incredibly inane, annoying take, engineered to provoke outrage, and that’s why I’m not linking to it here. Still, I think it expresses a line of reasoning that appeals to broad segments of white America, and that line of reasoning is worth unpacking.
To get the obvious out of the way: being wrong about this issue, or any human rights issue, is not brave, merely evil.
To dig down a little further: if you were an alien just finding out about human customs, seeing the photo at the top of this article with no further context, you probably would come to the conclusion that human beings kneel on one knee before sporting events, and that not doing so is a breech of custom that takes a certain amount of courage. This is how our species is wired, for the most part; it’s difficult for us to do things other than what people around us are doing.
But that conclusion willfully erases context. These players didn’t all show up to the stadium and put on their Black Lives Matter shirts because they saw everyone else was wearing them; nobody scrambled to take a knee when the anthem started to avoid looking out of place. This was a concerted, intentional effort by players on both teams—across the whole league, even. They had talked about this. They had listened to each other. This was not an easy decision.
Conversations within teams didn’t all start right away. Simone Charley talked to The Equalizer about how hard it was, in the days after George Floyd’s murder, showing up to training and deciding to act like soccer mattered, and seeing how easily that decision came to her white teammates.
In Portland, it took a few days for those conversations to start—prompted by both Black and white players, but in particular, according to Sophia Smith, by AD Franch—and nobody should take for granted that they started at all. They happened because Black women on these teams did the work of talking to their white teammates about experiences those same teammates haven’t always been willing to listen to. This sport is as white as it’s ever been, and many of the players who kneeled today come from backgrounds that haven’t forced them to ever think critically about racism—that have, in fact, actively discouraged it.
So while it’s true there’s been a massive, sudden shift in public opinion over the last month on the acceptability of publicly opposing racism, don’t think for a second that this show of support for Black lives was a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t the brands that brought us here. It was Black players fighting for their lives and finally being heard by their teammates.
Furthermore, there are stark facts here, facts that will be recorded in history: these players took their stance in an empty stadium, but that empty stadium was on broadcast television. As the first American sports league to return to play. That’s the biggest platform women’s club soccer has ever been on.
The players knew what this platform meant. It meant they were opening themselves up to criticism that no doubt would also have been directed at male athletes doing the same thing, but which, no doubt, will be more vicious thanks to their gender. Have things changed since 2016, when Crystal Dunn didn’t kneel because she was afraid—for good reason—USSF might “rip up her contract“? Of course. But you’d have to be an alien to sincerely believe there won’t be backlash.
But this is what can’t get lost in the noise: the players also knew how significant the moment was, and they knew they had to take it, and use it to say something. It’s okay for us to be proud of that.
The danger is in letting this gesture exist as a mere gesture, and in deciding once the tournament is over that we’ve all done enough. It’s great that we’ve finally reached the point in this league where players can express solidarity against racism and police violence without fearing for their jobs. Now it’s on us, at home, to commit to standing with them and doing the actual work of putting an end to those things.
The NWSL Challenge Cup has begun, marking the return of live professional sports to the United States.
In a reminder of just how much has been going on in the world outside the NWSL bubble, all the starting players wore Black Lives Matter warm-up shirts and Black Lives Matter armbands throughout the game, and took a knee for the national anthem. Which was played by a saxophonist in a suit, with slicked-back hair, who could not resist getting in some delicious licks at the end of a very smooth rendition of the Star-Spangled banner.
This strange image just about summed up the odd sensations of watching live sports again: the seriousness of the threats against life around the globe—Black life in particular—weighs on us all. We stand in solidarity.
The Thorns played better than expected for a young squad who saw significant departures in the off-season, and it was only a late defensive lapse that cost the Thorns a point in stoppage time. Leaving Lynn Williams unmarked is a very familiar way to lose against North Carolina, but the competitiveness showed by a young team in what was effectively a preseason game was admirable. Simone Charley notched her first goal for the team off a Lindsey Horan header for the only Thorns goal in a 2-1 opening day loss.
1. Raquel Rodríguez is the real deal
The Thorns swapping an iconic defender in Emily Sonnett for the player taken after her in the 2016 College Draft was a huge moment in the off-season. Rodríguez (affectionately called “Rocky”) has been a solid NWSL contributor for years, but did a midfield already stacked with talent really need another attacking player?
Yes, it turns out. Rodríguez was a killer addition in midfield, keeping the team ticking over well, holding the ball up and waiting for support, and even putting in some impressive defensive play. Getting overrun by North Carolina’s four midfielders has been an issue for the Thorns in the past, and Rodríguez’s competitive energy and strength were much-needed additions. It looks like this pairing with Lindsey Horan might work out after all.
2. Bella Bixby is ready for the spotlight
She got thrown directly into the fire against the team that shoots more than any other team in the league, but Milwaukie, Oregon’s own Bella Bixby had an impressive NWSL debut. She got tempted off her line unadvisedly for the Courage’s first goal, but otherwise showed well in her first competitive minutes, getting called upon regularly to defend her near post, nabbing everything she could in the air and holding some real rockets from distance.
AD Franch being a late scratch for the whole tournament was bad news for the team. But this is such a weird tournament, one where the Thorns get to try out stuff they normally wouldn’t. Giving Bixby a chance after two years with the club feels right, and she didn’t disappoint. It’s hard to feel like the future isn’t secure.
3. Parsons has some clever squad management plans
Seeing Tyler Lussi and the newly-signed Marissa Everett in the starting lineup threw a few people for a loop. While both players who have made an impact in their minutes for the club, they seem like they would be further down the depth chart than others. After halftime though, it quickly became clear what the plan was: Morgan Weaver and Simone Charley were double-subbed on for the starting forwards and immediately went to work, with Charley scoring and both looking dangerous the remainder of the game.
Charley has been minutes-limited in her time with the club, even in normal NWSL play. She’s clearly a sprinter who leaves it all on the field, and up against tired defenses, this could be a real game changer. Weaver is still getting used to professional fitness. Especially in the opening stages of this tournament, both can be maximized by holding them in reserve from the start. And with five substitutions now allowed per game, why not? It’s a pretty different approach to soccer than most people think of (where your best players must always start) but it’s worth a shot, and it will be interesting to see if it stays the same through the knockout rounds.
4. Aggressive defense works, except when it doesn’t
The Thorns defense has many qualities. They are not as fast as the North Carolina Courage’s attackers. Therefore, they should sit back as deep as they can, right?
Wrong. Becky Sauerbrunn, playing in her first game in Thorns colors, played her markers incredibly aggressively, coming well upfield to head away from Lynn Williams. Kelli Hubly, starting her first game in a while, looked excellent going to ground to win balls near the edge of North Carolina’s penalty box to unsettle them and prevent them from having an easy time building out of the back. It’s hard to say it didn’t work.
And yet, at the same time, the winning goal was conceded because Sauerbrunn was caught upfield trying to cut out a pass, which left two Courage players unmarked at the back post, when most would probably say that the team should have been trying to protect a point.
There’s no doubting that the Thorns made a real impact on the Courage’s midfield buildup in this game, and it cut down on their shooting opportunities throughout. Looking a little foolish once or twice on the break is normally a trade-off that the team will take. Some one has to step up and be the hero in that kind of situation, and looking at Bixby’s face after she conceded, she clearly felt like it should have been her. Those kinds of decisions will get more automatic for her in the future, but she shouldn’t feel too bad about it: the team made a calculated gamble—one that meant that they would sometimes end up in those situations.
