At a 2019 mid-season Portland Thorns vs. North Carolina Courage match, our mohawked capo revealed a dress with three arrows surrounded by a rainbow border. A cheer arose from the crowd of Rose City Riveters, the Portland Thorns supporter’s group. The dress was a response to the vaguely worded ban on political signs in soccer stadiums instituted by Major League Soccer (MLS) and, in the case of the Thorns’ home Providence Park, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). For much of the 2019 season, the design on the capo’s dress, a rendering of the anti-fascist Iron Front symbol became a flashpoint. Signs and banners with the Iron Front were forbidden in Providence Park, the soccer stadium home of the Portland Thorns. The ban purported to make soccer stadiums apolitical spaces. To broaden the fanbase by welcoming fans of all political stripes. But it was the explicitly radical politics of the Rose City Riveters that was the first aspect of the soccer experience that made a fan out of me.

Before the chanting and the whipping scarves, before the Thorns even stepped a cleat onto the pitch, it was the banners that caught my eye. Refugees welcome. Rainbow flags as far as the eye could see. A diverse fanbase of families, LGBTQ folks, people of color, as well as middle-aged white ladies like me filling the supporter’s sections. My experiences with sports, twenty years in my rearview, had left me alienated from women’s sports, disgruntled with the sexism and the simmering homophobia that had been the undercurrent of women’s basketball when I played in the late eighties. During my senior year in high school, my political consciousness was starting to develop. I started to question the compulsive patriotism of the anthem that crackled through the speakers before every game. I began to see the threads that connected the prioritizing of boys’ sports with sexism. Homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality were terms still years in my future, but I certainly saw the smirks when parents talked about my coach’s roommate coming to our games, how my varsity coach was labelled “shrill” for yelling orders, whereas our junior varsity coach, a man, had been approvingly slapped on the shoulder for his passion for the game for similar behavior. We were policed for what we wore, who we dated, for not behaving in a “ladylike” manner. Part of my turning away from sports was due to the seeming inherent conservativism, the constant devaluation of women’s play, and the stifling conformity.     

Before I attended my first Thorns match, I had no idea how radical supporting women’s sports could be. I stepped into Providence Park and saw the diverse faces in the Riveters section, the women capos, the banners supporting refugees, women, LGBTQ folks, and standing against racism. It was these political displays that cracked open the door to women’s soccer fandom.  Initially soccer was an afterthought to the experience of joining these people in support of this team.

In September, after months of protest and meetings with the league’s supporter’s groups, MLS rescinded the ban on the Iron Front after finally realizing that the ban did nothing but alienate the very people who were the reason for the league’s success. The ban created a false equivalency between speech that seeks to deny basic human rights, speech that emboldens prejudice and speech that is fighting for the humanity of all. The Iron Front banners are one facet of creating a welcoming space for people who are frequently left wondering if they are welcome. MLS contended that the Iron Front symbol has been co-opted by antifascist groups, or the ginned-up boogeyman of Antifa, while at the same time white supremacist groups literally drape themselves in the American flag. Yet the stars-and-stripes have somehow withstood this association.

The August 2019 Thorns game against the Washington Spirit coincided with the weekend that white supremacists of various affiliations descended upon Portland for an unpermitted march.  There were whispers that the white supremacists would attend the Thorns match to harass and intimidate the fans. Even though I am a cis-gender white woman and likely not a target, I felt terrorized and afraid for myself, for my daughter, and for my fellow supporters. I briefly considered skipping the game, but didn’t want to succumb to fear. Stepping through the entrance to the Riveter’s section, I felt like I could breathe easily for the first time that day. The capo wearing a Resist 45 Thorns jersey sipped a beer. Another capo wore my favorite “I just want to watch soccer and destroy the patriarchy” shirt. Symbols of the supporters’ shared belief in the humanity of all—rainbow flags leaning against seats and banners strung across railing that faced the soccer pitch—rooted me back in the moment, helped to dispel the haze of anxiety that had followed me all day.  

A year later, the connection between sports and politics became even more explicit. In hindsight, the attempt to uncouple the two seems naïve at best. The WNBA dedicated their 2020 season to fighting police brutality against black women and each player wore Breonna Taylor’s name on their jersey. During the NWSL Challenge Cup, a moment of silence to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter movement started every game. Players who kneeled during the playing of the national anthem far outnumbered those that stood. Before the kickoff of the first game, tears streamed down my cheeks when I saw the entire Thorns team and coaching staff take a knee during the anthem. In part, I couldn’t believe there was soccer in the middle of a pandemic—that I was seeing the Thorns on the soccer pitch again—but even more so, I was choked up because of the Black Lives Matter t-shirts and armbands players and coaches sported. The voices of black players were finally in the foreground and being heard. 

There is still work to be done. Players, organizations, and fans must move beyond slogans. White supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and prejudice will not go gentle into that good night without a fight. But I feel like when we, the Thorns supporters, can finally return to Providence Park to cheer on our team together, we will do so with a clearer vision of what we stand for and what we are up against. And the banners will be epic.

Katie Sinback’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, The Equalizer, Gravel, Crab Fat Magazine, Nailed Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Oyster River Pages, among other publications. Born and raised in Virginia, Katie lives in Portland, Oregon with her family where she cheers for the Portland Thorns as loudly and frequently as possible. She blogs at ktcrud.blogspot.com and can be found on Twitter @kt_sinback.