Tag: Kelli Hubly

Categories
Soccer Thorns

All Paths Aren’t the Same

Photo and edit by Nikitia Taparia.

Portland Thorns defender Kelli Hubly played for Chicago Red Stars Reserves team in the summers of her college career, so she had their gear. The only other team she has merchandise of is the Thorns.

Besides the Red Stars, “The only other pro team that I ever had a connection with was the Portland Thorns,” she says. “This kind of feels like it was meant to be.”

After almost quitting soccer in college, going undrafted, and receiving limited opportunities in the early years in the pros, Hubly has shown that all paths to the league aren’t the same. Through rediscovering her love for the game and believing in her abilities as a player, she has forged a path for others to follow and succeed in the NWSL.

Hubly’s journey to PTFC stardom has been truly extraordinary. Her story represents a lifetime of hard work, determination, and perseverance. Although it was an extremely difficult path, she would not change it one bit.

“My path has been crazy, says Hubly. “Looking back, it was really hard. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything because it’s gotten me exactly where I need to be. I’ve needed each step that I had to take.”

Hubly’s love for sports started at a young age. She enjoyed playing soccer and basketball. She was always around sports, thanks to her family.

“I started like, as young as I could,” she says. “I have two older siblings and younger one. My two older siblings would always be on a 3v3 tournament. So they threw all the younger siblings together. It was, like, boys and girls co-ed.”

She wasn’t always just a soccer player; Hubly’s love extended to basketball, too. For a long period of time, it was her preferred sport, but soccer was always calling.

“I realized that the club team that I had, we were pretty good,” Hubly says. “We started together really young. So, once I kind of realized like our team was pretty good, I started doing [U.S. Soccer’s Olympic Development Program] and everything.”

Even though she was getting called up into youth national team camps, Hubly still needed more belief in her own talent before she could go all-in.

“At 15, I was going to National Team camps,” she says. “I never thought I was that good. I thought I was decent, but to go into national team camps, I still didn’t believe I was good enough to be there.”

But, she says, “I kept getting called in, so  obviously I had to  then start to realize, okay, like maybe soccer is the way to go.”

The love of the game has its highs and lows. In college, Hubly experienced both. The time period would be a huge reflection point in her life. She spent three years at the University of Kentucky before transferring to DePaul.

“Kentucky was really an interesting experience because  SEC schools are huge,” Hubly says. “Going there my freshman year, I honestly didn’t even feel like I was there for school. I was mostly there for soccer.”

After her third year at Kentucky, she decided to transfer to DePaul. Hubly’s love for soccer was fading, and she didn’t even know if she wanted to play anymore.

“When I transferred to DePaul, I kind of, like, wasn’t gonna play soccer anymore,” Hubly says.

Hubly says Kentucky wasn’t the best fit for her, but Depaul was. “I really lost my love of the game,” she says. “Going to DePaul, finding my love for soccer again is what got me wanting to continue to play soccer. I didn’t ever think I was gonna play pro.”

Kelli Hubly defends Christen Press against Angel FC. Photo taken by Matthew Wolfe
Kelli Hubly defends Angel City’s Christen Press. Photo by Matthew Wolfe.

After going undrafted in 2017, Hubly’s career could have been over before it even started. Luckily, fate had other ideas. Former Thorns head coach, Mark Parsons reached out and asked her to come to preseason. When the Portland Thorns offered her an opportunity as a National Team Replacement Player that year, Hubly wanted to give it a real chance.

Hubly’s start with Portland was definitely not what she imagined, but she always remained strong and determined.

In her rookie season of 2017, she made two substitute appearances.

“I think that year, I needed that to grow,” she says, “and it wasn’t fun. I didn’t have a of friends. I was really quiet.” The normally-outgoing Hubly found herself watching Love Island eight hours a day, by her estimate.

“I was sad, but I promised myself: I’m gonna give it a year,” she says. “The next year, I came back and earned a roster spot. So I think it was just like, putting my head down doing the dirty work to get here.”

From 2018 to 2021, she earned 22 appearances with 18 starts. In 2020 and 2021, she started all the NWSL Challenge Cup matches for the Thorns.

Hubly blossomed in the 2021 NWSL Challenge Cup. She was dominant and staked her claim as a starter at center back moving forward—but also as one of the top defenders in the league.

Dubbed “unsung hero” of Portland’s defense, per Just Women Sports’ Hanna Martin, Hubly had the stats to prove it. She had a 100% success rate in tackles, a 68.2% success rate in duels, a 75% success rate in aerial duels, and successfully completed 84% of her passes. “Often overlooked among the Thorns’ star names, Hubly is as reliable as they come in the defensive third,” writes Martin.

In 2022, Hubly became Thorns’ Iron Woman by starting and playing in every game. She was one of only seven players in NWSL to achieve this honor.

On June 3, 2022 she scored her first ever goal off a ridiculous header against Angel City at Providence Park.

At the end of 2022 season, she would be an NWSL champion for the second time. However, for the first time, she was named NWSL Best XI Second Team.

“Honestly, I didn’t even [know],” Hubly says. “I skipped over the email because it wasn’t even a thought in my head.”

Kelli Hubly didn’t read the entire message at first, but when she looked at the NWSL email congratulating her, it was pure disbelief.

“I’ve never been the player even in college [to] win awards like that,” she says. “I’m just used to it by now. So, I was really shocked that I got the award.”

Naturally, the first person Hubly told was her other half of Portland soccer’s premier power couple: boyfriend, Portland Timber, and USMNT player Eryk Williamson.

Williamson continues to be her biggest supporter and fan, Hubly says. “He is always pushing me to be even more, even more, and even more,” she says. “He never wants me to settle.”

She then went onto tell her parents. “They’re just so happy for me,” she says, “all the hard work that is finally being recognized. I think for me, that’s the biggest part: just being recognized, like, how far I’ve come.”

In 2022, Hubly signed a contract extension that runs through 2024 and looks to be a player who could spend her entire career with the Thorns. After a lifetime of dedication to soccer, she is finally being recognized for her talent, work ethic, and consistency.

Her development since 2017 is why the NWSL matters, but also why being patient and developing players is so important. Hubly has shown that she’s only getting better and will continue to do so from here.

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Not Soccer Thorns

Soccer with the Stars: A Conversation with Kelli Hubly

Marissa Everett, Kelli Hubly, Meghan Klingenberg, and Rocky Rodríguez celebrating
Photo by Matthew Wolfe
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Categories
Not Soccer Thorns

“I Have to Turn This Shame into Something Better”

Photo by Lucas Muller

Last weekend, Thorns defender Kelli Hubly took to Twitter to voice her support for Black lives and her opposition to racism.

She’s in the minority—most white NWSL players have not spoken up on their Black teammates’ behalf. I was curious to hear how Hubly got to this place. As much as we should all focus on listening to and elevating Black voices, I also think it’s crucial for white people to talk to each other about race, because at the end of the day, white supremacy is our problem. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity; the full audio version is available on our Patreon for supporters at the $10 level.

Katelyn Best: You said in that first tweet that you had been trying to find the right words to say. What was going through your head, and what was the thing that finally pushed you to say, “I’m going to say something even if it’s not perfect”?

Kelli Hubly: I have a lot of close people to me in my life who are Black, so I’ve had a lot of harder conversations where I’ve felt uncomfortable, they’ve felt uncomfortable, but afterwards it ended up being a great talk that I think has helped me grow, and they grow. Before Utah, I had a couple good talks, and then in Utah, I got that picture [from the tweet] and I was like, “I really want to post this.” And at that point, I know—back and forth people on Twitter, some people say, “I don’t want a white person saying stuff,” and some are like, “I would love white people to be saying stuff.” And my thought process was, I didn’t want to say something that drew too much attention to me versus the real issue, which is Black Lives Matter. So I was in a dilemma of what to say that would make it all about Black Lives Matter and not just like, an Instagram post where I look like a good person.

So I actually have a note in my phone of like, all different thoughts that came into my head, because this was over a month where I would be like, “okay, I want to say something, but it needs to be the right wording.” Finally I condensed it, and it kind of came after—our team does these talks. Like, we do them every week or so, usually on a recovery day, and we either read something, or watch something, and we come back and talk about it as a team, our coaches are there, everybody’s there, and everyone’s engaged. We’ll do a big team talk and then we’ll go into like, smaller groups. So we’ve been bringing more attention to just, everyone educating together and educating each other.

We just had one last Sunday, and it just like, really made me feel like I should post. We haven’t had games, we haven’t had really anything that we could be showing the world, like, this is how we feel. We had Utah and we kneeled, we wore the shirts, we were doing that. But we haven’t really done anything since. So it just felt like the right time for me to post, and I confronted one of my really good friends from home and asked her, “hey, how do you feel about this? Be honest with me. Do you think this is the right message getting across?” And she was like, “Kelli, I love this, this is amazing, I love seeing you use your platform.” So I ended up posting it and I got like, a lot of close friends of mine in the Black community who were like, “thank you so much, you don’t understand how much we love hearing a white person use their platform.” So it was just nice to kind of get my view on things out, because I have a lot bottled up and I haven’t known what to say or when to say it.

Take me back—you said that you guys had a bunch of conversations in Utah, and I know that some of that started even before Utah, but where were you at on these issues going into those conversations, and what did you learn?

So, yeah, we started these conversations before Utah, and I actually started the education process even before those conversations with my team. Like, watching the Meek Mill documentary or 13th before 13th kind of like, really blew up recently.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in a white area. So a lot of that was so new to me, and I had no idea. I was kind of just like, shocked that this was actually going on. And I felt a lot of shame for a very long time, because as the white person, I’m like, “how are we doing this to other people?” So yeah, a lot of shame, and I kind of just realized like, I have to turn this shame into something better and like, do better, and have conversations with people. When I went home after Utah, I had amazing conversations with my parents about it, because they also weren’t as educated, either. Like, defunding the police, what that truly means—it doesn’t [mean exactly what it sounds like], there’s deeper meaning to it. And just bringing attention to what actually has been going on, because I’ve been so sheltered.

The conversations have been great, because we’re hearing different stories from different players who have had different experiences, and we’ve been super open with each other, and no one’s really judging, everyone’s taking everybody in, and we’re growing together. I’m learning a lot. I’ve read two books about it, and it’s just very eye-opening, and it’s sad that it took me this long to know what truly has been going on.

If it’s taken me, who, I’m a pretty open person—[I’m] open to learning, I want to do what’s best, I want everything to be right in this world. After hearing and seeing, even in Utah, like, us kneeling,  people writing comments, these comments are unreal to me! My bubble is so like, “Black Lives Matter!” and then I go onto Instagram or Twitter and these comments are like, insane! I’m shocked that people are still thinking this way, and it’s like, what can we do to change these people’s minds, just get them to educate themselves a little bit? It’s just crazy.

Yeah, that’s interesting, and I think that I am kind of in a similar bubble to you in that everybody I know sort of is on the same page: kneeling is good, Black lives matter, we agree something needs to happen about police brutality, and then you see people on Twitter or whatever, disagreeing with that, and it’s hard to wrap your head around.

I get furious. I’m like, I need to say something! But I can’t just be replying to all of these people!

I don’t know how much of this you saw or heard about, but during the Challenge Cup there was a lot of discourse around the kneeling. And it’s striking to me that the Thorns are the only team that every single player and every single staff member kneeled that whole time, and—I don’t want to make it about a soccer team—but to me, that seems to say something about the conversations that you had within the team, that were maybe not happening in the same way on other teams. I’m just wondering if you have any insight as to why things might have gone different for [the Thorns].

Yeah, so we, in Utah, had talked about kneeling, and basically said like, how do we feel? Because we kind of wanted it to be us unified together. And basically, we’re a very close team, like I’m sure you’ve heard through people’s interviews. We’re very close and we all really trust each other, so we can have these hard conversations, and if someone felt uncomfortable, we can have that conversation.

So we kind of all decided together. Our coaching staff has been amazing, because they’re supportive of everything we’re doing, and through this whole process they’re learning so much, because a lot of them are foreign, so this is different because they’re not even from America. They’re learning about all of our history, and they’re trying to figure out, “ok, what are we doing, what do you need us to help with?”

So basically, we made a decision, like, if we’re all going to do this, we’re all going to do it, so we decided that we all were going to kneel, and we also decided after the first game, that we were all going to do it in a line together. I feel like we’ve just been really unified, and we have a really good culture, and it’s nice to see and be a part of.

I don’t want to pry into any conversations, but was there any reluctance, were there folks on the team who were like, “ah, I don’t know, I want to respect the anthem and respect the flag,” or whatever? Was there any of that kind of conversation happening?

Yes and no. Some people, it’s family, or just having people, veterans, in their family, so I think that was the hard part, but then when we talked about it, they knew this was the best thing for us to do and they felt good about it. They were able to, say, if their family member said something to them, they were able to have that conversation and express how they were feeling. It’s just been, like, a crazy time, and people from different parts of the country, it’s interesting to see different parents’ views versus like, my parents’ views. So for the most part, I think we were all pretty much on board and felt comfortable doing that.

I don’t know if you watch the WNBA, but they’ve done a series of pretty impressive, very unified, strong statements on these issues. It’s been striking to me how much more unified and I think, frankly, more effective they’ve been as a league, than the NWSL was during the Challenge Cup. I’d love to get your thoughts on this, but I think about the whiteness of the sport of soccer. Do you think that plays a role in how some of these conversations go down?

Definitely. We’ve actually talked about this in our last talk, last week. Basically, soccer’s a super white, privileged sport. It’s expensive to play growing up. You’re traveling, you need support, you need money, basically, to play soccer at a high level. So that’s why I think you see a lot more white soccer players.

But still, it doesn’t give us an excuse for not doing as much as the WNBA. I think what they’re doing is great, and I think looking at what they’re doing, I think it’s sparked a lot of conversations within our team to see what can we do with these games coming up. We’re on CBS our first game. What can we be doing? Can the announcers be giving out facts during our game? Could we like, think of something to put on pregame instead of when the anthem’s playing, we have something else playing, like players talking about stuff going on in the world? What can we be doing to do our part? Because they’re definitely doing way more than us, and it’s been effective. There’s a picture that I saw of the players in the shirts with the seven bullet holes, and I was like, “wow, that is really powerful.” So it like, makes us want to do more when it’s our turn to be on TV.

When you say that you want to continue to support your Black friends and your Black teammates, what does that mean to you? 

So, just knowing that they can come to me whenever there’s something going on, because I know times are hard and it’s frustrating, and it’s exhausting, and I just want to be able to support. Not pry, but just know that I’m always here. And to just pay attention more. I think everyone needs to pay attention more. And everyone just needs to be more kind! Like, I don’t know, the world is just crazy right now. It really bothers me, because I just see so much hate going on, and I’m just the total opposite. I have so much love to give to people.

So, support, educate, and be able to spread knowledge to people. When I went home, being able to talk to my parents more and give them a deeper meaning to things that I’m going through here. My parents are like, “oh, you’re so liberal! It must be Portland!” I don’t even think that way, I’m like, this is what’s right! This is, you know, human rights here. So just being able to support and be the best person I can be and do what I need to do to help. If it’s posting more, if it’s donating, whatever I need to be doing to make things better.

Do you have any highlights from the stuff that the team has been reading, or the stuff you guys have been listening to that you might recommend to people?

I think a great place to start is [Ijeoma Oluo’s] So You Want to Talk about Race, the book. That was the first book I read. A couple of my other teammates have read it because we were going to do a book club type thing, so a bunch of people got the book. So we’ve talked about it, and that’s a great place, I think, for people to start, because it touches on a lot of different subjects, and then basically if you want to know more about that subject then you know, like, this is what I want to zoom in on next time I read a book or something. And it gives facts, which you can’t, like—facts are facts.

It gives great stories, which are sad at times. Like she talks about being pulled over, and like, last year I got pulled over. And not once did it cross my mind that I would be scared. I’m just like, “oh my god, no, I’m caught!” My biggest thing is like, is my dad going to be mad at me? That’s what’s going through my head, but when I read this, I’m like, oh my god, people are scared for their life, where like, they’re tweeting that they got [pulled over]. Like that is so crazy to me, because that’s never once crossed my head. I’m so privileged. So that’s a great book.

13th is great because it’s just eye-opening. I really recommend the Meek Mill documentary [Free Meek], especially if you follow Meek Mill, he’s a rapper. So his story is unbelievable. I watched that and my jaw was just like, dropped. I think it’s six episodes and I watched them all in a day and I was just like, there’s no way this is real.

Then I read another book, it was a memoir of Mychal Denzel [Smith], The Invisible Man. It was interesting reading a memoir, and with voting all going on right now, it was really interesting, because in the book he talks about how when he was able to vote, him and his dad woke up at like five a.m. so that they could go wait in line for two or three hours, to make sure they could vote. And to go through like, those depths of waking up, waiting in line for two hours, to just be able to vote? I was shocked because I don’t think my parents have ever waited that long, I don’t think I would ever have to wait that long if I was at home voting—because I vote by mail-in ballot—but I was like, that’s crazy! I don’t know. It’s just really eye-opening and the memoir was really cool to read, because it’s in his shoes, and it’s just a totally different perspective, because it’s also a male perspective. It’s just been really interesting to read and just know more about.

I think the last thing I want to ask you is, how do you approach conversations with people who you feel are less aware of what’s going on, or a little bit less open to learning? Do you have a strategy that you’ve used?

Well, I haven’t really come across that many people that have not been open to it. I think, because yeah, even with my parents, if they weren’t sure about stuff, like, my mom didn’t know the term “defund the police.” And so she’s like, “Kelli, but like, we’re still going to need police officers!” And I’m like mom, that’s not the point! So like, bless her heart, she’s so cute, and then once I told her, she’s like, oh, that makes so much sense.

So I think not like, attacking people for not knowing, and not making fun of them or not thinking they’re a bad person because they didn’t know. It’s more if they’re willing to be open and learn, you just have to start wherever they’re at, and then build from there, but you have to do it in a growing way. You can’t be negative, because then they could feel bad about it, or go into a shell. We’ve talked about this on our team. And Gabby actually said, “I would give them the book So You Want to Talk about Race.” And I think that’s a great starting point for people. And she was like, there’s facts. You read those facts, like, you can’t really argue them. So I think that’s a great way to start, and then it kind of sparks the conversation.

It’s definitely hard, and you don’t want to start an argument over it. But you also need to have the conversation. So, yeah. It’s interesting, but I try to, you know, just be nice about it. Start slow and then get into it. Like I had a couple conversations with my parents, and then I told them to watch 13th. They didn’t understand like, the war on drugs and stuff. And I mean, I wouldn’t probably, either, if I didn’t watch this.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Pack It up and Call It a Season

Photo by Lucas Muller

The soccer has come and gone for the Thorns, and for the rest of us, all that’s left to do is stare into the abyss and hope everything else might get slightly less bad at some point.

But first, let’s reflect on some of the big-picture takeaways from Portland’s Challenge Cup experience.

A War of Attrition

No summary of Portland’s Challenge Cup experience would be complete without noting the single overarching theme of the whole tournament, for all the teams involved, which is that the whole thing was very exhausting. The Thorns started the tournament without AD Franch and Sophia Smith, immediately lost Becky Sauerbrunn, and hung on to Lindsey Horan until she sat down in a defeated-looking heap ten minutes after the half in the quarterfinal. I do not know how Raquel Rodríguez or the 37-year-old Christine Sinclair were still ambulatory by the end of the tournament.

More striking than the impact on any particular player, though, was how fatigue shaped outcomes for Portland twice: first when they took down a North Carolina team that had started basically the same lineup throughout the preliminary round, and again when they limped out of that game and into their semifinal against Houston. Keeping up with even a tired Courage side is an extraordinary athletic feat, and the Thorns paid for it.

Diamonds Are(n’t) Forever

Portland played a new formation in this tournament, a 4-4-2 diamond. This made sense for the players they had available: with Tobin Heath sitting out and Midge Purce and Hayley Raso long gone, the Thorns were left with no real wide attacking threats. They did, however, have an excess of quality central midfielders of various shapes and sizes: Horan and Sinclair, of course, plus Rodríguez, Angela Salem, Celeste Boureille, Gabby Seiler, and Emily Ogle.

What was striking about this particular diamond was where the width came from—namely, in large part, from Rodríguez and Horan. In the team’s first outing against North Carolina, that was largely visible as both of them provided defensive muscle out wide, putting early pressure on runs by Jaelene Daniels or Lynn Williams to ease some of the burden off Portland’s outside backs.

That system is an interesting interpretation of what’s usually thought of as quite a narrow formation, and it went a long way toward containing the Courage; what looked weirder was when Horan and Rodríguez attacked from wide areas. The intent here seems to be to keep Sinclair (mostly) central and have her connect play both into the box and to whoever’s out wide, whether that’s Horan, Rodríguez, or one of the forwards. The problem is that lacking both players like Heath or Raso, who can stretch defenses out of shape and beat wide defenders one on one, and a reliable target striker, teams were able to focus their pressure on Sinclair and force her into sideways passes. What the Thorns were left with was a lot of very hopeful crosses and no one to put on the end of them.

Of course, attacking from out wide paid off one very important time, when Rodríguez sent a pass under Denise O’Sullivan to Morgan Weaver, who bodied past her mark to score the go-ahead goal. This is to say the system kind of worked. You could see how it was supposed to work in that moment. But they just couldn’t generate enough chances this way. Weaver, who looks extremely promising but still raw, can’t reliably beat defenders at this level; more important, it’s not the best use of Horan, Rodríguez, or especially Sinclair, who looked stranded a lot of the time.

In short, this was an interesting experiment while it lasted, and it helped the team find some notable success against North Carolina, but it would be hard to justify for a Thorns roster that included Heath, Sophia Smith, and one or more Rumored International Forwards.

Photo by Lucas Muller
Some Success Stories

The pandemic has meant that the Thorns, like several other NWSL teams, never got the chance to finish building their roster—after having purged half of last year’s starting lineup, no less. Kadidiatou Diani, rumored to be headed to Portland for $445,000 a year, would (assuming she could have adapted to the physicality and competitiveness of the NWSL) have provided exactly the kind of creativity out wide the Thorns are currently lacking. Making matters worse, Ellie Carpenter, another key piece both defensively and going forward—and once thought to be the only Aussie who would survive the exodus—left shortly before the tournament.

On the other hand, the players Portland did acquire are all excellent additions. Rodríguez, arguably the most important piece, is the midfield partner to Horan—a second box-to-box player with the right combination of creativity, work rate, and defensive grit—that Parsons has been looking for since the 2017 season ended. Weaver is physically strong enough to body defenders and gutsy enough to take them on the dribble; with a little more experience under her belt, she looks like she could turn into the mythical goal-scoring forward Portland has lacked for years.

But the team made the most progress on the defensive side. Surprisingly for a team that picked up Becky Sauerbrunn in the offseason, that progress doesn’t just boil down to new signings. Christen Westphal was excellent, but the revelation this tournament was Kelli Hubly, who impressed at right back in the opener, then stepped up to fill the vacancy left by the injured Sauerbrunn centrally. She saved the Thorns more than once, and her willingness to step to opposing forwards made her a great partner for the more conservative Emily Menges. Finally, sitting deep in midfield, the team has an absolute bulldog in Salem, who’s been sidelined by injury for a good chunk of her time with the Thorns. All in all, the roster still looks incomplete, but it’s deeper than it looked heading into the tournament.

“The Culture”

If you ask anyone on the team, they’ll likely say their biggest achievement this month was a return to the Thorns’ vaunted team culture, something both the players and Parsons say had slipped by the end of 2019. For all the talent on any given Thorns roster, this is an attitude-first coaching staff, and whether or not players have a certain personality and work ethic often guides both who gets signed and who gets traded away.

Parsons’ focus on building a team-first, relentlessly hard-working culture, and the unexpected results it sometimes produces, is underappreciated—at least outside Portland. This is a team that often excels when the odds are stacked against them, as they did during the World Cup last year, or during the Olympics in 2016. Even when they won the championship in 2017, they were using a (different) formation they had adopted to make up for Heath’s absence earlier that season, and they gritted and ground and, frankly, punched their way past the top team in the league.

They couldn’t figure out how to win that way this time around; the basic concept was a little too makeshift and the bench a little too shallow as the tournament wore on and injuries took out player after player. But if a strong team culture is the foundational variable Parsons and his players say it is, this is a significant step in the right direction.

The state of the culture is basically something we have to take the team’s word for, especially at a moment when no one is allowed to even speak to them in person. But that, plus an organized defense, have been the foundation for Portland’s success in the past, and if they stay focused on those two things, they’re in good shape looking toward 2021.

Photo by Lucas Muller
And Beyond

That’s the good news. The other news is that a wholesale rebuild is still looming for the Thorns, probably sooner rather than later. They have to expect to take some losses with two expansion teams entering, and then, on some unknown date, comes the real inevitable truth: Christine Sinclair cannot play professional soccer forever. It’s said that mileage matters more than years, so this truncated “season” may wind up extending her career, but she’s nonetheless nearing 40.

At that point, it’s anyone’s guess what direction this team goes in. They’ve built their midfield around Sinclair and Horan for the last five years, and one thing that became clear in Utah is that while Sinclair is still quality, she also needs certain types of players around her to succeed. When she departs, the club changes completely, the way things do when realities so long-lasting they feel like laws of physics change. The only certainty seems to be that the Thorns become, fully, Horan’s club. Beyond that? We’ll have to wait and see.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways from Portland’s Quarterfinal Victory over North Carolina

Photo by Lucas Muller.

After wrapping up the preliminary round of the Challenge Cup winless in last place, the Portland Thorns pulled out a thrilling 1–0 win over the North Carolina Courage with a 68th-minute goal from rookie Morgan Weaver.

The match marks the first playoff game that the Courage have lost since the 2017 NWSL Final, and the first time North Carolina has been shut out since last May.

1. Injuries didn’t bode well for Portland early on

Beyond the tournament-ending injuries for AD Franch, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Sophia Smith, Bella Bixby, Lindsey Horan, and Emily Menges were also listed as questionable ahead of today’s match. While both Horan and Menges started the game, Bixby’s right knee injury paved the way for Britt Eckerstrom’s first start since August of last year.

Unfortunately, the knocks didn’t end there. The first half of the match saw both Horan and Katherine Reynolds go down—for Reynolds, in a head collision with Lynn Williams that saw both of them bleeding and Reynolds subbed off the pitch.

Horan was able to come out in the second half, but fell to the ground again in Portland’s defensive box. She was subbed out for Celeste Boureille in the 51st minute.

Especially given the fact that the Thorns have looked uninspired without Horan in this tournament, these early injuries were worrying.

2. Parsons made some interesting defensive choices, but it worked out alright

Portland started the game with Reynolds on the right, Meghan Klingenberg on the left, and an Emily Menges-Kelli Hubly centerback pairing. In her 40 minutes on the field, Reynolds was often left dealing with Williams up North Carolina’s left flank, and found herself burned by Williams a handful of times—including in the first minute of the match.

While Reynolds is a better defender when isolated one on one, the decision to start her over the faster Christen Westphal was questionable, and the Thorns were lucky that the Courage didn’t take advantage by overloading that side with Williams and Jaelene Daniels.

The other somewhat illogical choice, in the first 20 minutes at least, was the partnership between Menges and Hubly. At the beginning of the match, Menges was consistently the player stepping higher to win the ball while Hubly hung back, something that felt counterproductive given their respective strengths. However, the duo figured things out as the match went on, with Hubly more often pushing up to win the ball and Menges stepping to take on players.

3. Believe it or not, the Thorns scored a goal

After scoring a total of two goals in the preliminary rounds—with one of those goals coming off a Horan set-piece header—things didn’t look particularly promising for Portland’s attack heading into this one. On top of that, they’ve looked significantly worse without Horan.

Regardless, the Thorns broke through when Christen Westphal played a pass up the line Rocky Rodríguez. Rodríguez dribbled to the endline and squared her hips to send a low cross front of goal and beat her defender. Morgan Weaver peeled off Addisyn Merrick at the far post to tap the ball in, and the Thorns were up with their first game-winner of the tournament.

4. Britt Eckerstrom had the game of her life

Slipping down Portland’s goalkeeper depth chart to the third string, it was hard to know what to expect from Eckerstrom going into this game. Fortunately, she did really, really well.

If she had any nerves, Eckerstrom worked through them in the first half; her handling was a bit shaky, and she was lucky to catch her own rebound on two separate occasions. She was also fortunate in the fact that North Carolina struggled to put their shots on target, with a handful of sitters hit wide of goal or missed completely.

However, the Thorns ended the half 0–0, and Eckerstrom showed flashes of the fantastic positioning and ability off her line that she relied on heavily in the second part of the game.

And that second half was something to behold; Eckerstrom was everywhere across the face of goal. She came out several times to smother a through-ball in traffic—including blocking a Courage breakaway and deflecting the rebound wide—and got a strong punch to a brilliant Debinha free kick to preserve the Thorns’ lead.

Bonus: #FreeNadine

Eckerstrom was absolutely fantastic today, but it was kind of cool to see Nadine Angerer listed as a sub for the Thorns—even if it was the result of Portland’s first- and second-string keepers being injured. And, yeah, it was a great game, but can you honestly say it wouldn’t have been better if Angerer had gotten a couple minutes at the end?

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Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways from Portland 1, North Carolina 2

Portland Thorns team in Black Lives Matter warmups. Rob Gray / ISI Photos

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.