Tobin Heath returned to Providence Park last Saturday after signing a one-day contract two weeks ago. However, she wasn’t there to play.
A few minutes before kickoff, the Portland Thorns celebrated her career. When she stepped onto the pitch she graced so many times as a player, Heath was being honored for all the things she accomplished while donning the Thorns’ shirt – but she also got a reminder that she helped to build the place she was standing in.
A week earlier, Meghan Klingenberg received the same treatment.
Two Portland legends, two ceremonies. Two different reminders that the club has enough history worth remembering.
Going back…
The people behind the club wanted to go big from the very beginning.
You understand how seriously the people behind the club took the project when you see names such as Christine Sinclair, Tobin Heath, Rachel Buehler, Karina LeBlanc, and Alex Morgan on Portland’s inaugural roster.
Nonetheless, Portland wasn’t accumulating stars just because they could. No, each one of them played a pivotal role in the team’s success.
Heath represented the aesthetic side of the Thorns’ identity. She made the spectacular look normal and made Providence Park a place where something magical could always happen.
The midfielder’s stats are spectacular and well documented. But that’s not the point. Heath’s contributions came in key moments when the club needed her the most. She didn’t simply participate in the beginning of Portland’s history; she played a huge role in writing its first chapter.
While Heath was the magic and gave them their championship, Christine Sinclair represented a reliable, steady presence. She was continuity. The Canadian captain played a big part in all of Portland’s major accolades, connecting the 2013, 2017, and 2022 championships.
Sinclair was the club’s face for more than a decade and led the team as it evolved from a great inaugural team into an established powerhouse.
In the case of Klingenberg, she became part of the club’s second great era. She arrived in Portland as an accomplished USWNT fullback and, just like Heath, her résumé is outstanding. Her competitiveness? Out of this world.
And that’s the thing, right? The Thorns not only accumulated stars, but they signed players who stayed long enough to become part of the club’s identity and who left their marks in the team.
Providence Park
Portland took the main stage along with FC Kansas City in the NWSL’s first-ever match on April 13, in front of 6,784 people. The attendance was good, but it paled compared to the Thorns home opener.
Actually, besides the roster, that was what set Portland apart. A total of 16,479 people attended the match at Providence Park, then known as Jeld-Wen Field, a number that was outstanding if we put ourselves in the context of women’s soccer in the U.S. back then.
And that attendance wasn’t an isolated number; it became the norm and set the tone. By 2019, they averaged 20,098 per game, becoming the first team in the NWSL to cross that threshold.
Huge crowds at Providence Park became the norm even though it was uncommon anywhere else in the world. Portland’s legacy would not be the same without not only the Rose City Riveters, the club’s supporters group, but also the people who cared enough to fill the stadium after the novelty wore off.
That’s why both Klingengerg and Heath looked overjoyed to be able to celebrate with the North End one more time after their respective ceremonies.
Growing pains
However, nothing’s perfect and Portland is far from it. Throughout their history, they have had many growing pains. Coaching controversies, organizational failures, ownership turmoil, the selling of the club and the transition into new ownership, and of course, some tough results on the pitch such as the 2016 and 2018 Championship losses.
Nonetheless, the club not only survived all that but also worked hard to be reborn from the ashes. It wasn’t easy. After all, the Thorns were long celebrated as the golden standard for women’s soccer. So, finding out their systemic management failures was far more devastating when exposed.
Portland mattered enough that its failures mattered too. Actually, rebuilding trust after those failures became part of the history just as much as the trophies. And they proved it by picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and keep pursuing success, despite all the noise around the club.
A new era
A lot had changed between the Thorns’ second championship in 2017 and their third title in 2022.
The roster was very different by then. Bella Bixby carried on AD Franch’s legacy. Becky Sauerbrunn and Natalia Kuikka took the main stage on the defense. In the midfield, Heath was long gone, as were Lindsey Horan and Amandine Henry. They were replaced by Sam Coffey, Crystal Dunn and Hina Sugita. Also, the previous year was the year Olivia Moultrie was added to the roster. In the forward line, Sophia Wilson and Morgan Weaver were one of the hottest — if not the hottest — duo in the league.
However, no matter who was on the roster, the heritage was in safe hands. Names changed but the standard remained the same.
Four years later, can this current roster continue the legacy? Because none of the current players helped to build the Thorns since the very beginning. All of them inherited something. Will they be able not only to protect what they inherited but also write another chapter in the club’s history?
When you put star players, trophies, fans and continuity, you don’t just create history, but institutional memory.
And maybe that’s why Klingenberg and Heath’s ceremonies just hit differently. They were not simply celebrations of retired players but reminders of where the Thorns came from. The success, the standards… When the current players and the next generations to come walk into Providence Park, all that comes with them.
But the great part is, long after they’re gone, people at Providence Park will still be telling their stories. About how a 25-year-old midfielder with a mean right foot beat the goalkeeper in the NWSL’s first-ever championship, or how the team survived the last 34 minutes with 10 players until their Canadian captain secured the win in stoppage time. They will talk about how two of the club’s goalkeepers were able to score important goals. How a player came on as a late sub to score an absolute banger in stoppage time to secure the ticket to a championship final after becoming a mother only five months ago. Or how a certain winger scored the winning PK in sudden death to win the 2021 Challenge Cup in the middle of a pandemic.
They will tell those stories and so many more. Because that’s what happens when a club becomes part of the people who come after it. And that’s a privilege. But it also can be a burden. Portland’s jersey comes with expectations and the very successful stories of those who came before them, and that can be very heavy sometimes.
But maybe that’s the price to pay to become a legend in the Rose City. Because all those players mentioned in this article, before they were legends, were Thorns.
