Athletics
Portland Magazine
Alumni
June 7, 2019
Three Pilots, One Stage: Who to Watch for at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup
by Katelyn Best
WHEN SOME 500 of the world’s top soccer players converge on France this summer for the Women’s World Cup, three University of Portland products—Megan Rapinoe ’08, Christine Sinclair ’06, and Sophie Schmidt ’10—will again suit up for their countries, marking the third World Cup for Schmidt and Rapinoe and the fifth for Sinclair. The Pilot contingent will be far from the largest at the tournament, but pound for pound, it may be among the most impactful.
What Rapinoe is known for on the international stage, more than anything, is a quasi-magical clutchness, an often impossible-to-believe ability to drag her team back from the brink with a moment of absolute brilliance. She did it in the 2011 World Cup against Brazil, when in the 122nd minute, with the USA down 2-1, Rapinoe sent the world’s most perfect cross into the six-yard box, where Abby Wambach pounced to head the ball into the net and send the game to penalties.
Rapinoe also did it in the semifinal of the 2012 Olympics, where she scored two of the USA’s three goals—one an absolute stunner from the corner of the 18, and one that curled straight into the net off a corner kick, a feat known as a gol olimpico. Coincidentally, on the other side of that game, which the Americans won in the 123rd minute, was Rapinoe’s former UP teammate, longtime Canada captain Christine Sinclair.
Sinclair’s 19-year international career is impossible to do justice to in this space; to simply list all of her many accomplishments at the college, club, and international levels would be unfairly reductive. She is by far the best soccer player Canada has ever produced and has a strong case for being the best ever in the women’s game. She combines athleticism, technique, and intelligence, and, remarkably, is at least as good at age 35 as she was at 25. With 181 international goals (as of this writing), she is just four shy of being the most prolific international scorer of all time. She is also renowned for being one of the nicest people in the sport.
Also on the Canadian team will be University of Portland graduate Sophie Schmidt, who went on to play club soccer in Sweden, the US, and Germany, including a three-year stint at FFC Frankfurt, during which she featured in seven Champions League matches in a 2015–2016 campaign that saw her team reach the semifinal round of the prestigious tournament. Schmidt returned stateside this year and currently plays with the Houston Dash.
Sinclair, meanwhile, still lives in Portland, where she’s the Thorns’ captain and tentpole player, the leader everyone wants to emulate, and the one everyone looks to for guidance when things go wrong. It’s no coincidence that the Thorns’ most important player is a UP product; The Bluff, after all, is where women’s soccer first gained a foothold in this city.
Over the last 20 years, as two professional leagues came and went, as the US women’s national team broke into mainstream consciousness and then faded back out of it again and again, a fanbase was quietly building in Portland. Fans who followed the Pilots in the Clive Charles days had gotten hooked on the sport, and when Merritt Paulson became the owner of one of eight teams in the nascent NWSL, those fans turned up in droves. They made scarves and flags, chanted and pounded drums, roared with excitement when things went right and booed the refs when they went wrong.
This is a team that represents the best possible future for women's sports in America—and it all started at UP.
The scene around the Thorns was and still is like nothing else in the history of the women’s game: an honest-to-God following, one that shows up week after week and sings their hearts out for a club team. This is a team that represents the best possible future for women’s sports in America—and it started at UP.
But if Portland remains the global capital of women’s soccer, this World Cup could represent a big moment for the sport, one in which interest slowly seems to be growing in countries like France, England, Spain, and Italy, traditional strongholds of men’s soccer where sexism has long impeded the growth of the women’s game. Women’s sides like Barcelona and Juventus have drawn record crowds in recent months, and in England, Barclays recently signed a reported £10 million sponsorship deal with the women’s league.
Longtime followers of this sport have been burned before in hoping that the hype around a World Cup would translate to sustained interest, but growth isn’t always linear, and each bump in enthusiasm nudges the graph in a positive direction.
So, outside of the University of Portland graduates, who should you be watching this summer?
Look for the USA, England, France, and Australia to make deep runs. The Americans are still the most talented squad in the world, and they have to be considered favorites again, but France and England’s technically gifted squads threaten the USA more and more each year. If there’s one can’t-miss game at this tournament, it’s a likely meeting between the Americans and their French hosts in the quarterfinals.
Expect Australia, meanwhile, to be the most fun team at the tournament, with a young, hungry lineup eager to make a statement on the world’s biggest stage. Oh, and they have a player named Sam Kerr, the best forward in the world right now, and a woman who, after a reported million-dollar investment by Nike, is poised on the brink of superstardom.
KATELYN BEST is a freelance writer.
PHOTOS: 1) Megan Rapinoe of USA celebrates with fans after the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final between USA and Japan at BC Place Stadium on July 5, 2015, in Vancouver, Canada (Stuart Franklin-FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images); 2) Captain and forward Christine Sinclair of Canada blasts the ball inside the 18 yard box against Costa Rica in an exhibition match on June 11, 2017, at BMO Field in Toronto, Canada (Adam Pulicicchio/Getty Images); 3) Sophie Schmidt of Canada in an international FIFA women’s friendly soccer match between Canada and Brazil at TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, Canada, September 2, 2018; Canada defeated Brazil 1-0 (Sean Burges/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).
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