Sports

Soccer Gala Deep-Dives into the Timbers' History

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:03:00 -0700

Consider the sports team. On the one hand, franchises are just for-profit corporations. Fans are, in one famous comedian’s immortal words, rooting for laundry.

On the other, a beloved team is a near-mystical pact: thousands of strangers join together to believe that spending hours (or decades) watching five, nine, or 11 paid specialists chase a ball can actually mean something. This week, some fans of our Major League Soccer club, the mighty Portland Timbers, provide a fine demonstration of the latter principle.

Thursday night, the Hollywood Theater hosts “Beating Seattle Never Gets Old,” a gala benefit for Bless Field. This all-weather soccer complex at North Portland’s New Columbia housing development will serve a multinational community of young players, grassroots clubs, and public schools, creating a spit-shined footballing and social asset for one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods.

“Beating Seattle” promises a deep-dive into local soccer’s surprisingly rich, hirsute history: the event’s centerpiece is archival footage from the original Portland Timbers’ short but glorious 1970s existence. Amid the general disco inferno of ‘70s America, soccer enjoyed a brief heyday thanks to the free-spending North American Soccer League, which imported high-priced (and usually aging) European and Latin American stars to unlikely places like Tulsa, Edmonton, and Portland, Oregon.

“Beating Seattle Never Gets Old”
Hollywood Theatre
Thursday, April 4 at 7 pm

The shorts were short, the hair was big. In between debauched nights at Studio 54, the NASL got some soccer played before its untimely demise in the uncool 1980s. Along the way, the league seeded the soccer fanaticism that has turned the modern Timbers into one of MLS’s crown jewels—and launched the still-fratricidal rivalry between Portland and the Seattle Sounders. The Hollywood event will showcase some of the ‘70s Timbers’ finest moments: playing the Brazilian legend Pele and his glamour-boy New York Cosmos; kicking a ball around baseball’s legendary Wrigley Field; and a truly epic moment in front of 31,000 at what’s now JeldWen Field.

Vintage Timbers players like Willie Anderson, Bernie Fagan, Roger Goldingay, Mick Hoban, Bill Irwin, and Jimmy Kelly will be on hand to relive the moments—or what they can remember of them.

Meanwhile, “Beating Seattle” also provides an excellent cross-section of the Timbers’ increasingly ambitious fan culture. While most media coverage focuses on the raucous, self-choreographing Timbers Army, the club’s supporters arguably do their most interesting work away from JeldWen. Through the volunteer effort Operation Pitch Invasion, Timbers fans have repaired and renovated public soccer fields across the metro area, with Bless Field the most recent and large-scale project. OPI is, in effect, one public face of the 107 Independent Supporters Trust, the fast-growing nonprofit organization that provides the Army with its organizational backbone.

In all, the evening proves that sometimes—Seinfeld notwithstanding—sports can go beyond drycleaning.

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Can Portland's New Superstars Save Women's Soccer?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Alex Morgan, Courtesy Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images

Her teammates call her Baby Horse. Alex Morgan, star for the US women’s soccer team, runs with a coltish gallop. Any awkwardness disappears, however, in front of the goal, where Morgan is one of the game’s most lethal strikers.

The charismatic 23-year-old Californian has become other things, too: a Katy Perry impersonator for ESPN The Magazine, Olympic gold medalist, tweeter to a million followers. Her next role arguably includes saving her sport’s professional future as linchpin of the Portland Thorns. When this new team takes the field on April 21 in the equally new National Women’s Soccer League, insta-rivals Seattle Reign better watch out for Baby Horse.

“Losing one game,” Morgan said in a recent interview, “feels worse to me than winning five games feels good.”

Women’s soccer itself needs that uncompromising passion right now. Since the 1999 World Cup made cultural icons of Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain, two national pro leagues have crashed and burned. When Women’s Professional Soccer collapsed last year, team owners complained of seven-figure annual losses. “This is probably the last opportunity for women’s pro soccer to survive,” says coach Cindy Parlow Cone, a fierce 34-year-old who left an assistant position at the University of North Carolina to lead the Thorns. “I wanted to be part of it.”

Despite the gloomy history, Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson is betting that the Thorns can capture at least some of the frenzied passion that has turned his (male) Major League Soccer team’s matches into a hot ticket. His formative roster certainly looks good on paper. Besides Morgan, the Thorns also boast former University of Portland (and perennial Team Canada) star Christine Sinclair, a fiery striker who chops defenses to pieces. Together, Morgan and Sinclair should display some of the most formidable women’s soccer firepower ever assembled.

And that raises the key question: will talent be enough?

On January 29, 2012, Morgan and the rest of Team USA partied in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel bar after winning an Olympic qualifying tournament. Players sipped beers and belted out a half-decent, celebratory rendition of “Proud Mary.”

The next morning, WPS folded. The players, most suddenly unemployed, solemnly packed bags and called cabs.

The US Soccer Federation, the game’s organizing body in this country, led the rescue operation. Financial hubris and high overhead had doomed the first two women’s leagues. This time, the USSF allied with Mexico and Canada on a new concept: the nascent league will draw its most elite talent from the three countries’ national teams; the soccer federations of the US, Mexico, and Canada will pay those players. Local owners will pay everyone else under a relatively tame salary cap of about $500,000 per 20-player team. The league itself will operate with a skeletal staff.

This was enough to convince Paulson, who spent over $30 million on the Timbers’ Major League Soccer franchise fee, to take a much cheaper risk. “When it became clear that US Soccer would pay some player salaries, it changed the model,” Paulson says. “Plus, we’re sitting in the best market in the country.” Paulson and the team decline to reveal start-up costs for the women’s team, but one knowledgeable national industry insider estimates the Thorns’ launch will cost a few hundred thousand dollars.

Paulson says he doesn’t expect immediate profits, but adds that supporting the women’s game “is the right thing to do.” (No other MLS owner invested in the new league.) By mid-February, fans had reserved 5,000 season tickets—far more than any team in either failed league ever sold. (While fans have held meetings to prepare for the Thorns’ arrival, supporters will likely “brand” themselves separately from the famed Timbers Army.)

“She’s the complete player. She’s fast. She’s good in the air. She can finish.”
—Alex Morgan, on teammate Christine Sinclair

The huge crowds that watch the US national squad have never translated into strong followings for local teams. Peter Wilt, a renowned soccer executive who launched both the Chicago Fire of MLS and the Chicago Red Stars of WPS, warns that while local enthusiasm gives Paulson an advantage, the Thorns need to catch on fast. “In Portland, which will have a built-in audience right away, fans need to feel the team is theirs,” Wilt says. “Emotional connections need to be created quickly. Otherwise, it could be one and done.”

On that note, the Thorns will probably be fun to watch. Defender Rachel Buehler is known as the “Buehldozer.” Midfielder Tobin Heath passes with the casual ease of a blackjack dealer flipping cards. Karina LeBlanc, a mohawked Canadian goalkeeper with a peppery personality, will protect the net.

The league’s future remains to be seen. In the short term, some say the Thorns could do what no Portland professional team has since 1977.

“When you look at the roster,” ESPN soccer journalist Beau Dure says, “it’s easy to say, ‘That’s your championship team right there.’”

Splitboarder Kyle Miller Gets Gnarly in the Northwest

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Jason Hummel

Kyle Miller is not quite a household name in winter sports. But over the last decade, the 31-year-old Washington native has achieved pioneer status in a relatively new (and bold) alpine discipline: backcountry splitboarding.

A splitboard is basically a snowboard that splits down the middle into two skis, a structure that allows riders to ski/hike into pristine backcountry, then snap the board back together to surf virgin snow. Miller uses the technology to conquer the Northwest’s mightiest mountains—up and down. With two documentaries giving his solo expeditions some mainstream exposure, Miller explains his three craziest Oregon exploits:

North Sister via the Early Morning Couloir

“This is one of the steepest couloirs in Oregon.” (With an elevation gain of 5,000 vertical feet, the Early Morning demands stretches of climbing at 45-degree angles.) “It took me three trips in one season before I finally managed to ride it in late May, when the snow transitioned into crusty-surfaced ‘corn,’ which makes the five-mile approach easier.”

Mount McLoughlin’s Northeastern Face

“A classic line in Southern Oregon, with a sustained run down of over 3,000 feet. After riding down, I climbed an additional nine miles through dense, dry forest.... The trail had received flood damage earlier in the season, so I was forced to ford a creek multiple times.”

Mount Jefferson

“Possibly the most isolated volcano in Oregon—it’s a slog any way you look at it. I had to traverse the whole volcano clockwise twice to attain the 10,500-foot summit.” And when he got off the mountain: “I was bloody, blistered, and bruised, but ... I was stoked that I had completed my journey.”

Portland Timbers with Multinational Loyalties

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:48:00 -0800

in soccer, patriotism can be tricky. Thanks to stretchy “citizenship” rules, a pro born in one country can play for a different land in international competition, while talent migration gives youngsters tangled roots. As the Timbers kick off a new season, we present five players with elastic identities. (Note: sports are cruel and rosters are subject to change.)

Image: Courtesy Portland Timbers

Bright Dike

USA ⇒ Nigeria

The muscular (and, some say, callipygian) striker hails from Oklahoma, but Nigeria-born parents make him eligible for that country’s national team. He scored for the Super Eagles against Catalonia—no, not legally a country, but that’s another story.

Image: Courtesy Portland Timbers

Mobi Fehr

USA ⇒ japan ⇒ switzerland

The teenage midfielder (and triple citizen) was born in New York, grew up in Tokyo, and played for a Swiss team. Can he take on teammate Sal Zizzo’s Italian food cart with a pizza/sushi/fondue bike delivery service?

Image: Courtesy Portland Timbers

Rodney Wallace

Costa Rica ⇒ USA

Born in San Jose, Costa Rica, Wallace moved to Maryland when he was 9. In 2011, he scored a goal for Los Ticos against the USA—causing Timbers fans to erupt in emotionally conflicted hurrahs/jeers.

Image: Courtesy Portland Timbers

Will Johnson

Canada ⇒ England ⇒ USA

Born in Toronto to British parents, our newest midfielder split his youth between Chicago and England. He’s now a regular player for Canada’s national team. We can’t wait to ask him for tips on jet lag recuperation.

Image: Courtesy Portland Timbers

Danny Mwanga

Congo ⇒ NoPo

Raised in Kinshasa, Mwanga emigrated as a teen and ended up at Portland’s own Jefferson High School. No word on whether he and fellow Timber Brent Richards (Camas High School) argue over local-roots bragging rights.

The Straight Blast Philosophy

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:25:00 -0800

Image: Nathaniel Young

Matt Thornton with the Straight Blast mascot

at Northeast Portland’s Straight Blast gym, a string concerto echoes from the stereo. The atmosphere feels like a well-behaved library, not a macho sweatbox. Even so, within martial arts Straight Blast is known for its full-contact training style: students are more likely to battle each other than execute karate’s traditional kicks into thin air.

This two-fisted approach lends gym founder Matt Thornton renown as a trainer, but he’s now gaining notoriety for a different combative pursuit: philosophy. In blog posts, videos, and interviews, Thornton propounds an arch-skeptic’s approach to both fighting and life. He takes issue with both rival schools of martial arts and anyone who pursues what might be called faith-based thinking. “Belief absent evidence is a vice,” says the imposing 6-foot-8 fighter. After establishing a pugnacious rep online, Thornton is at work on a book that could introduce his muscular personality—and reverance for scientific method and rigorous testing of any belief— to a wider audience.

In the gym, Thornton holds a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and adapts that style’s emphasis on sparring to disciplines like boxing, judo, and Thai kickboxing. He meanwhile rejects traditional noncontact exercises and martial-arts mysticism as having limited self-defense value. “Once you train my way, you can’t do other stuff anymore,” he says. “It would be like being a doctor, but also practicing witchcraft on the side.”

“Once you train my way, you can’t do other stuff anymore.”
—Matt Thornton

After 20 years, Straight Blast enjoys global appeal: 15 affiliated gyms or training groups in the US and 10 abroad, in places like Seoul, Cape Town, and Dublin. Traditionalists, on the other hand, don’t care for Thornton’s criticism of “dead” martial arts. San Francisco–based instructor Gary Moro scoffed: “The only people practicing ‘reality based’ fighting skills are ... in the military.”

Meanwhile, quotes from British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell and astronomer Carl Sagan weave through the tattoos that crosshatch Thornton’s forearms. Peter Boghossian, a Portland State philosophy professor and Straight Blast student, hopes the fighter’s book-in-progress can strike a blow for rationality. “Thornton can make complex ideas clear to a wide audience,” Boghossian says.

In all, Thornton seems to apply the spirit of contact sports to intellectual argument. “To get good at jiu-jitsu, you have to lose thousands of times,” he says. “If you say, ‘I’m never going to tap out,’ you’re never going to be any good.”

Video: Behind the Scenes at Portland Meadows

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:48:00 -0700

Directed by Vanessa Renwick
Percussion by Dan Sasaki

The Defender

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:21:00 -0700

Image: Daniel Root

Ultimate Frisbee has been on the rise since its invention in the 1960s—since 2003, membership in the Ultimate Players Association has grown by 168 percent. For the uninitiated, Ultimate is an athletic amalgam: as physically demanding as soccer, it also requires the throwing precision of baseball and the dauntless diving of beach volleyball. Portlander Chelsea Putnam, a former Team USA member, talks about her personal genesis in the sport, its popularity in the Northwest, and what the future holds.

••••••••••••

My sports growing up in Corvallis were gymnastics, basketball, track, and soccer, so I’ve always loved athletics. But all the sports I played never quite matched my skills. In soccer, I was known for diving headers; in basketball I dove for balls on defense; and in track I won a race by diving across the finish line. So when my neighbor introduced me to Ultimate at the end of high school, I thought, “This is the sport I was meant to play.”

I went to the University of Oregon and joined the women’s team there and played for Schwa, Portland’s elite women’s club team, during the summers. I immediately latched on to the welcoming community, and it became my world. After college, I played another five years with Schwa, and was fortunate to play with Team USA in 2009.

Tracey Satterfield, one of the best strategic minds and throwers in the game, basically raised me in Ultimate. She had been playing for nine years by the time I joined Schwa. These women I played with ... man, they were what you would immediately think of as badass women. They had eight-packs—they would bike 15 miles to practice, which we started with a timed mile, and five hours later they would bike home.

I’m a defensive cutter. I’ve always loved the challenge of defense, and the satisfaction of learning to anticipate where your woman is cutting and shutting them down.

Over the years I’ve had some pretty rough injuries, from temporary paralysis to at least four broken bones. It’s funny, because it’s supposed to be a non-contact sport, but it moves at such a high speed that it can be very rough on your joints. If you’re good to yourself, and you get lucky, you can play well into your 40s.

Even though there has been a serious increase in competition over the past 15 years, I don’t worry about the spirit of the game declining. The game is still largely self-officiated, but the introduction of “observers” has made an impact. At higher levels, when a “foul” or “travel” is called, observers will settle a dispute when asked to do so by players who can’t reach an agreement. Because more and more players don’t feel they have to work it out and immediately call for the observer, it removes the fundamental conversation.

Ultimate brings similar-minded people together. We all love to play our very best while at the same time being ridiculous, loud, silly. I don’t know how else to explain it—we love stupid games. I think it’s the competitive spirit in all of us. No matter what it is, we have to win.

The level of this game is going to skyrocket in the next 5 to 10 years. I was the defensive coordinator for the Junior USA team in 2008 and 2010, and have been assisting this season. The quality of the youth players is insane. Part of me wishes I were 15 again and starting all over so I could have access to all these new resources.

I think it’s incredibly important to stress to young players that respect and camaraderie cannot be taken out of our sport—and if they ever are, it should no longer be called “ultimate.”

The Most Hated Trail Blazers Opponents of All Time

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:08:00 -0700

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

1. The LA Lakers

Loathing these Los Angeles starlets is practically a national pastime. Reasons are innumerable: smug Kobe, Jack Nicholson’s courtside leering, those hideous uniforms—not to mention their habit of gutting the Blazers at the worst times (2000 Western Conference finals, anyone?). The Blazers square off with these ancient foes on October 31 and December 28. TRENDING—

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

2. The curse

The Blazers’ cruelest opponent may be the mysterious dark force that cuts short the careers of our brightest stars with injuries, from Bill Walton and Sam Bowie to Greg Oden (above) and Brandon Roy. After he was traded in March, Marcus Camby claimed the curse was real. TRENDING ↑

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

3. rick fox

Smarmy Rick Fox personifies everything evil about the Lakers. Starting in 2000, he helped them beat out the Blazers in the playoffs (our last true chance at a championship run), won three successive NBA titles, married and divorced Vanessa Williams, and retired to become a TV actor. TRENDING ↓

4. karl malone’s elbows

In the late 1990s, division rivals Utah Jazz were notorious for their aggressive play—especially Karl “The Mailman” Malone, whose elbows are forever imprinted on the memories (and faces) of many a Blazer. During the feisty 1999 playoffs, Malone elbowed Blazer Brian Grant in the eye. (The Blazers also lost the series.) TRENDING —

Image: Courtesy Steve Lipofsky

5. michael jordan

Everyone knows the Blazers passed on this soon-to-be legend in the 1984 draft, choosing the injury-prone Sam Bowie instead. To add insult to injury, Jordan and the Chicago Bulls thrashed the Blazers in the gutwrenching 1992 NBA Finals—the closest Rip City would ever get to repeating its 1977 championship. TRENDING ↓

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

6. every undrafted superstar

Portland’s draft day bungling is the stuff of legend: Bob McAdoo, Julius Erving, Charles Barkley (above), Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Kenneth Faried—each one a living, jumping, human reminder of what could have been. Indeed, with their 1972 draft of dud LaRue Martin, the Blazers hold the unofficial title for Worst Draft Pick in NBA History. TRENDING ↑

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

7. lebron james
In 2010, King James notoriously turned his back on his hometown Cleveland team to join its rivals in Miami, instantly becoming the most hated player in the NBA. But coming off an Olympic gold medal and his first NBA title, it’s doubtful that he cares. The defending champs come to Portland on January 10. TRENDING ↓

8. seattle supersonics

Portland’s nefarious I-5 rivals are no more. But with rumors swirling of the NBA making a return to Seattle—and with soccer’s Timbers and Sounders stoking the flames in the meantime—look for a rivalry revival. TRENDING ↑

unranked
Kobe Bryant, Robert Horry, Luis Scola’s hair, Hedo Turkoglu’s wife, $9 beers at the Rose Garden

Slide Show: A Day at the Track

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:19:00 -0700

Portland Meadows photographs by Daniel Root

Portland Meadows: The Jockeys

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:41:00 -0700