The principles that constitute the annual donation drive known as By Your Capo A Pint aren’t exclusive to any one group like the Timbers Army, but they and the 107ist have championed this initiative for the past five seasons with aplomb. So it’s probably safe to presume that you’ve read about its origins involving Tim Burr, a Stuttgart jersey, capos, values, charities, kids, etc.

That also means that you can probably figure out what the Rose City Riveters plan to do in about two weeks’ time on August 17th, yes?

We: The 107ist, Rose City Riveters, Portland, Cascadia, humanity and so on, seek to create a realizable philosophy that actualizes our beliefs into actions.

We, as capos, help people to find their voice during match day.

Buy Your Capo A Pint is a chance for the people in our sections to say, “Thank you” to the conductors of the NWSL’s most insatiable supporters by requesting one more thing of you: Whatever you would consider to be the value of a complimentary beverage for a hard-working capo, instead of buying that beverage put that money into our pickle buckets and we will turn it into tuition for young girls to attend Portland’s own Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls.

The choice to benefit this magnificent group speaks volumes that are arguably equal to those that the RCR doles out on match days for the Thorns.

“Creative voices of girls and women need to be amplified to create social change. Girls need positive role models and support for their creative endeavors. We can build a community where girls support each other rather than tear each other down. We can empower girls to recognize, understand and respond to discrimination. ‘Girls Rock’ is more than just a slogan.”

http://www.girlsrockcamp.org/

August 17th is the last match of the regular season for the Thorns.

August 17th we host our rivals from the north before the post-season begins.

August 17th will require your heart, you extra vocal chords, your passion and your rhythm.

August 17th presents to you the opportunity to help many young girls a chance to become confidant, empowered women who rock.

See you in the stands.

Hey! Ho! Go Thorns!

– The Rose City Riveters Capos, Drums and Trumpets

The results are in and the people have spoken! With 59% of the vote out of almost 500 people voting, the undisputed winner this year is Vero Boquete. ¡¡Felicidades Vero!! We’ll be honoring you at the match this weekend.

Honorable mention goes to runners-up Jess McDonald, Nadine Angerer, and Christine Sinclair.

The game tomorrow (like the games for the rest of the season) has the potential to be a real scorcher. For the hardy souls who will be in the sun, we have two ideas:

1. Bring a spray bottle to mist yourself and the people around you. Bottles have to be empty when you come in, but can be filled in the bathrooms. Don’t forget to protect your phone from possible misting.

2. We will have buckets of ice water down by the main stage for dunking your scarf, hat, bandanna, etc. Please, no swimming, and don’t drink the water; it’s gonna be funky.

Wear a hat, bring sunscreen, drink water, and remember the players are in the same sun and running for 90 minutes on the scorching turf. The least we can do is bring the noise.

—

EDIT 7/14: Well, we didn’t end up needing it, but we will do this for future sunny hot daytime games. Stay cool.

As a few of you may know, we had a few complaints following the Seattle home match a while back. Folks didn’t like that people were swearing. Or booing a Seahawk. Or that they didn’t bow down in reverence of a USWNT player on the opposing team.

Whatever. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone supports in different ways. What matters deep down is that they’re supporting. Complaints are going to come, especially after a contentious match against our closest rival.

So, it came as a bit of a surprise to me to get a complaint email in the middle of yesterday’s match. I wasn’t in the North End yesterday, I was up in my perch in what Heidi calls my “lofty eyrie” that the rest of us call the press box. From up there, I can hear chants pretty clearly. Yesterday, I didn’t hear anything unusual.

But still, the complaint came.

Hello. I am a person who loves the Thorns, my whole family does. We have season tickets, however it is very troubling to us that the Riveter chants that used to be so supportive to our Thorns are now used for making our city look like a bunch of assholes. The game against Seattle fans had disgraceful behavior and today’s game too with chants of lousy keeper? Our team is a good one and we should instead continue to support them as best we can instead of wasting effort abusing the other team. It makes the Thorns, their supporters and the city of Portland look bad. I hope it gets resolved soon.

My immediate reaction to this was, very simply, snotty dismissiveness. I read it on my phone on the elevator down to the post-match presser, and again before the coach and players came in to answer questions, and once more when we found out Karina LeBlanc, last year’s Riveters player of the year and current Chicago Red Stars keeper, would be in to give us a few quotes, too.

One only need be within thirty yards of me when the Timbers play the Galaxy to know of my *ahem* dislike of Robbie Keane. But I don’t think we were anywhere near that with Karina. Karina will always be one of us.

But Karina also gets it. She knows what being a player on an opposing team coming into Providence Park entails. Moreso, she knows what being an opposing keeper coming into Providence Park means.

It means you stand with your back to the loudest, most boisterous group of supporters anywhere in women’s sports for at least 45 minutes. It means you are greeted with the “Dodgy Keeper” chant as all opposing keepers are, regardless of skill or how much we may love them as players or individuals. It’s just part of the game.

So, it should be no surprise that she was asked about it in the post-match presser. And her response should be no surprise, either.

Portland is just a city that I remember being here just playing for the people. They’re great, they’re energetic, they love the game. It was just so nice. I just embraced it and just said this is such a good opportunity to play in front of amazing fans. I didn’t take it as them cheering against me or anything…

They’re fans, they have to cheer for the home team. I didn’t take it personally. Again, when I walked out there, they were on their feet clapping for me. It’s a special feeling. Portland will always have a special feeling in my heart…

When the whistle blows, you just want to play the best soccer and give the best expression of yourself on the field. It’s always special playing here.

As previously stated, KK will always be one of us. She gets us. She played her heart out for us. She may play somewhere else, but she will always be loved in Portland.

And, until such time as she finds herself again wearing a Thorns badge, she will be greeted with “Dodgy Keeper.” And she will laugh and wave and take it as part of the game.

It seems the world is colored red, white, and blue this week.

The USMNT made a valiant effort in the knock-out round of the World Cup and Independence Day happens to fall on the same day as our next Thorns home match. And for many of us, it’s a three day weekend. And Tobin Heath is finally here. And Paul Riley says Mana Shim is healthy and will be ready to play by Friday.

So, let’s celebrate ALL THE THINGS with streamers.

Get thee to the nearest Dollar Tree and buy all the red, white, and blue streamers they have. They usually run two rolls for a buck, but if you’re patient and have a little spare time (and/or an electric drill), you can re-roll those two rolls into bunches of mini-rolls to share with the people around you. If you don’t want to share your streamers, at least share this post so folks know to bring their own.

And here’s another thing: Friday, make sure you’re in the stadium early. The Thorns have been kind enough to allow us a few minutes pre-warmups for the promotion ceremony of one of our own. Jaimie Wyckoff is being promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. The tentative time for this is 10:10, just after gates open, so hurry in.

As per usual, we’ll have Fanladen (1633 SW Alder) open pre-match for any of your merch, 107ist membership services, or ticket exchange needs. If you’ve got a spare ticket you won’t be using, you can donate it by transferring it to info@rosecityriveters.org.

Every once in a while, I get a reminder of why we do the things we do. I got another one today.

This has been an up and down season, difficult to navigate, difficult to understand, difficult to stay up for games when the results have been so inconsistent.

For those that don’t know, I’m the one behind the Twitter account. I do my best to answer questions there and give out a bit of info here or there on where away day viewings will be or when we’ll have Fanladen open or when we need help with tifo or whatnot.

I also get to see the other side of it that a lot of you might not see. I see when people click that favorite button.

And I see when players follow the account and when they click favorite on its tweets. And sometimes it makes me cry.

One of the other things I do is write a bit about the Thorns for a soccer website. I’m not very good at it, but I keep doing it anyway in the hope that maybe someday I’ll get better at it. It allows me a little extra access on game days. I get the good stat sheets from the team and I go to the post-match presser and listen to Paul Riley and try to figure out what he’s thinking.

And when I leave the presser, because I’m lazy, I take the elevator up to the concourse to head home. Tonight, one of the Thorns, an injured player who did not play, rode up with a bunch of us.

There was a visiting journalist who’d been asking me about the game and if I enjoyed it.

“Well,” I said. “I enjoy all games in varying degrees.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as we all piled into the elevator.

“I like wins better.” The words were already out before I realized the player was there with us. I felt like an idiot. She doesn’t know me, she doesn’t know the small role I play in the Riveters.

But she smiled and said emphatically.”I do, too!”

I got off the elevator and thought about it all the way home. What a dumb thing for me to say and what a remarkable reaction she had.

For some odd reason, she follows my personal account on Twitter and I sent her a message when I got home to apologize for being snide and to reiterate that we’re not in it just for the wins, but to support the team when they most need us.

She replied almost immediately. “I do know that. Rain or shine, win or lose.”

Those words touched me. Rain or shine, win or lose. That’s the epitome of what it means to be supporters.

And, when I posted those words on the Riveters Twitter account, three of our Thorns hit favorite and I was again reminded that they play for us. All heart, all emotion, they want to win for us but they know that we will be there for them even if they don’t.

There’s some magic in that.

Join the Riveters in Seattle on July 27th when the Thorns take on the Reign. In their house.

The Riveters have 2 buses going to the Seattle Center to help the Thorns bring 3 points back to the Rose City. We have 100 tickets to the match, and want to get even more! We won’t do that unless there is demand, though, so please buy your tickets on our bus and in the Riveters section early, so we can plan for the right amount of supporters.

The timeline:

• 10:30am – Buses will be loaded and we will depart from the north side of the Convention Center (on NE Holladay Street). Please arrive a few minutes early, as we want to leave as soon as everyone is on their bus! ** There will be 1 stop on the way at a rest stop.
• 2pm – Arrive at the Seattle Center and enter Memorial Stadium.
• 4pm – Kickoff
• 6:30pm – Depart for the Rose City. **There will be 1 stop on the way at a rest stop.
• 11pm – Arrive back at the Convention Center

We have 3 different options for joining the Riveters at the match. Please know that all sales are final.

• Bus ticket/match ticket combo – You will be given your ticket as you board the bus at the Convention Center
• Match ticket only – Please meet up with the Riveters at Memorial Stadium at 2pm to get your ticket.
• Bus ticket only – You may have beat us to the punch and already purchased your ticket. We have a seat on the bus with your name on it.

And, finally, a few notes/rules about Riveters Away Travel:

• NO GLASS ALLOWED ON THE BUS. While we are allowed to bring food and drink (adult beverages are way okay), you are not allowed to have glass containers. Please plan accordingly.
• NO #2 ON THE BUS!! The bathroom on the bus has a very small storage tank!! We will be stopping at a rest stop about 1/2 way through the drive. Or, about 90 minutes in.
• There are no age restrictions in the Riveters or on our buses. If you’re a party of 1, coming with friends, or want to make it a trip for the whole family, please join us!!
• Memorial Stadium allows flags, banners and 2-sticks. Please leave all noise makers at home, though. Those will not be allowed into Memorial Stadium.
• Bring food and drink. Keep glass at home. Clean up after yourself. Keep an eye on each other. We all want to have fun.

Questions? Ask in a comment! Feedback? Provide it in a comment!

We have 10 weeks until we see them again. Let’s get ready.

#BAONPDX

The Thorns inaugural season was something of a fairy tale come true: a new team in a new league spurred on by a level of support never before seen in women’s soccer.

The style of play was not great, but our Thorns pulled themselves together and, when push came to shove, won a championship and raised a trophy.

This is the dream of every young athlete, male or female.

For female athletes, it often means working part-time jobs and playing team sports as a hobby as professional opportunities in sport tend to be not in team sports, but as individuals. Golf and tennis are prime examples.

Women’s soccer has struggled. The teams play in less-than-stellar facilities to sparse (and often silent) crowds. With the exception of a few, they’re paid a pittance and many hold down second jobs when they’re not training and traveling with their teams. It isn’t easy, it isn’t pretty, but they play for the love of the game.

They found it impossible, for the Thorns held fast together.

This is where the fairy tale ending happens. This is where women’s soccer is elevated to the point where it sees support as strong as support for men’s soccer.

Last night’s tifo, a story book opening across sections of the Thorns most raucous supporters, came from the story of Little Briar-Rose.

She was her parents’ pride and joy and they invited Wise Women from throughout the kingdom to attend her birthday. Each conveyed on her magical gifts to enrich her life, save one:

When eleven of them had made their promises, suddenly the thirteenth came in. She wished to avenge herself for not having been invited, and without greeting, or even looking at anyone, she cried with a loud voice, “The King’s daughter shall in her fifteenth year prick herself with a spindle, and fall down dead.” And, without saying a word more, she turned round and left the room.

They were all shocked, but the twelfth, whose good wish still remained unspoken, came forward, and as she could not undo the evil sentence, but only soften it, she said, “It shall not be death, but a deep sleep of a hundred years, into which the princess shall fall.”

Eleven Wise Women. And the twelfth stepped forward to save her. I could write a treatise about how supporters (I hate to make a Twelfth Man reference here, but there you go) will be the ones who will save women’s soccer, but it’s been pretty well covered over the last couple weeks.

When Briar-Rose falls into her deep sleep, her entire kingdom does as well and around her castle grows an enormous hedge of thorns to protect her as she sleeps.

In the tifo, the thorns were shown wrapped around the NWSL Championship trophy, protecting it from those who would wish to take it from us.

The league will be more difficult this year. New players, an expansion team, new coaches for a couple teams. The play will be better, the competition stronger. Holding onto that trophy for a second year will be a challenge.

But the Thorns will hold fast together. 

Our fancy new German Ballon d’Or winning keeper Nadine Angerer just finished a Twitter Q&A by asking who would be there Saturday for the Thorns home opener.

Simple answer: we will be.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the last week about support of women’s soccer and what it should look like and whether the league’s marketing efforts are well-placed. Every one of us has an opinion. None of that matters when Saturday dawns.

We stand. We sing. We support. We raise flags and do whatever is within our power to spur our team toward victory. We are at the stadium long before the gates open and we linger after the match until security asks us to leave. We are all ages, all races, all creeds, aligned perfectly for a few hours each week when our team takes the field. This is what support looks like in Portland.

Do you want to be a part of it? As we did last season, the Riveters will be focusing on concentrating support in sections 106-108 of the North End at Providence Park. While the entirety of general admission is set up as standing-singing sections, this is where the loudest of us will be. If you want to sit and watch, you are welcome to do so from elsewhere in the stadium. Flags and banners are welcome here, though if your banner is super huge, you should probably consider hanging it from the front of one of the North End sections. Zip-ties are your friends.

If you’re still looking for a ticket to the match Saturday, please check the Timbers Ticket Exchange page on Facebook. Our friends there have set up event pages for each Thorns match and monitor the page to make sure folks are playing by the rules: face value only. No scalpers.

If you’ve got an extra ticket you can’t use and would like to donate it to the Riveters tifo fund, please email it in pdf form to info@rosecityriveters.org. We will sell these (again: face value) at Fanladen before the match. Fanladen is the home of the 107ist located at 1633 SW Alder, just a few blocks from the stadium.

This year, Fanladen will also be our base for merch sales. If you need a scarf, a patch, a t-shirt or a bandana, you’ll find them here until about 45 minutes before game time and then for a VERY BRIEF time post-match. We’ll open the doors at about 4 p.m. for merch, ticket exchange, and 107ist sign-ups and member services.

Above all else, have fun. Portland is home to a league champion team. We’ve earned this. Let’s enjoy it.

SPEAKING OF CHAMPIONS:

The Riveters will be hosting a photo-opp with the championship trophy and Thorns midfielder Allie Long on Tuesday, April 29. We’ll be set up at Fanladen, and you will need to register in advance. This isn’t a meet-and-greet. There will be limited time to get people through the line for photos so please register ahead of time and be a few minutes early for your time. You can register here.

Scarves up, everyone. It’s time.

So this past week we’ve all been discussing this piece from Juliet Macur in the New York Times and ranting about how badly the author missed the mark. Our type of supporters had been ignored, deemed irrelevant, as if nothing we’d done since the league started to promote our passionate supporter culture had made any impression. Shortly after the NYT piece came out, Texas supporter Dana Crane posted an op-ed piece on The Soccer Desk site, and we nodded our heads furiously, seeing her take on Macur’s assertions one by one and dismantle them with real-life positive counterexamples. Among those examples were us, the Rose City Riveters.

The same Riveters who, in my opinion, just failed to bring it in New Jersey against Sky Blue, despite overwhelming numbers in the stands supporting Portland Thorns FC and not the home team.

So what the hell happened there and what can we learn from it?

This was the local hype leading up to our trip to support the Thorns against Sky Blue in New Jersey. H and I traveled from Portland and brought a couple of local fans in with us. A boatload of other Thorns supporters— some players’ friends and families, but also Paul Riley’s youth soccer club from Long Island—promised “the potential for a loud away crowd.” Families of Thorns players from around the area tailgated in the parking lot and invited us over for food and drinks. Allie Long’s boyfriend grilled burgers. Amber Brooks’s awesome mom fed us sandwiches and beers and cookies and fruit salad. Courtney Niemiec’s people gathered around another vehicle with their own coolers. There weren’t very many Sky Blue fans around. It seemed like maybe we were collectively going to rock the place. Our house, in the middle of Jersey.

Inside, though, that illusion blew apart quickly. Inspirational girl pop played over the PA. The kids of the soccer club had been instructed by email to wear their own club’s jerseys, “does not matter what color or type”; though some of them were in tune enough with the Thorns to have chosen red and white, many hadn’t bothered. Alongside the club kids, the stands were packed from end to end with other young girls and their mostly uninterested parents. At one point before the match, Alex Morgan toured the pitch smiling and waving like a pageant winner. The trio of preteens in the bleachers above ours gushed and fawned when she went by, and I commented how funny it was that they’d brought her here to just walk around even though she won’t be playing probably for months. They looked at me like I had three heads.

Since we weren’t allowed to have poles in the venue, we hung our flags up front. We had a Riveters crest travel banner, Portland city flags, a rainbow Cascadia. Nobody stopped us, but security did come over and make us re-hang them lower on the rails so kids could see over them at autograph time. Nobody asked us what any of it signified. Apart from some of the players, I’m pretty sure no one knew.

We had a travel drum, a cowbell, some claves. Our section and the adjacent one were both full of away fans, so we stood toward the front where we could lead chants and have both the team and people in the bleachers hear us. Bleacher seats were technically assigned, and a whiny mother complained until we moved and made way for her and her kids. Everyone around us sat. The announcer advertised the local Olive Garden.

We sang and raised our scarves during the anthem. People looked at us. We drummed and chanted. People moved away. We looked up pleadingly at our two locals, one of them an old-school Timbers fan, and begged them to make noise and sing with us. They gave us a pained, helpless look and put the claves back in the drum bag. We decided to try just singing without the drum. We sang Onward. No one joined in. Our locals moved into the next section and sat where they could see the game better. We stopped playing and singing and started agonizing about how we were letting the team down, how terribly we were failing the rest of our group watching the live stream. I started live-tweeting miserably. It all seemed wrong. This was *our* crowd. Except it wasn’t.

Rampone scored for Sky Blue. We held our scarves up and sang Rose City Til I Die. A celebratory siren recording played over the PA.

When Long was near us, we sang to her:

Allie Long, I know this game is killing you Oh, Allie Long, your aim is true

Some guy down below us said, “You haven’t used that drum very much.” Yeah, dude, why, you want to chant? “Oh, no, I only know UVA songs.” OK, you teach us yours and we’ll teach you ours. No? Okay, then. So we sang:

We schlepped this drum 3000 miles, we’ll schlep this drum 3000 more Just to be the ones who schlepped this drum 3000 miles and hope they score

At the half I wandered over to Section 9 to find someone to chat with in Cloud9, Sky Blue’s new supporters group. Not many were there and the contact we’d been chatting with online was out of town, but a thirties-ish guy in a Red Bulls jersey recognized the Riveters scarf and shook my hand. We hadn’t heard any drums or singing way over on our end, but John was in fact their drummer, and he’d come over from the Empire Supporters Club to help the new SG. This match, Sky Blue’s home opener, was Cloud9’s first as an official entity. He said what Cloud9 is really hoping for is a double-header in Harrison. Yurcak Field is too far out of the way, too hard to get to by transit, plus ESC has the history and experience supporting a team for the full 90, and C9 could use some of that.

Long converted a PK in the 75th to equalize. She’s been a beast so far this season. We drummed and sang We Root for the Thorns. Others around us barely seemed to have registered that the team scored a goal.

A boy, maybe 10 or 11 years old, came up to us. “Hey, I’ve got one. I Believe!”

Nah, we told him, that’s for the national team. He shrugged and walked away. We wondered whether maybe we should have humored him and just done it. When in Rome and all that. It’d have at least been something.

A group of little girls up above us started doing “Let’s Go Portland, Let’s Go”. Then “De-fense! De-fense!” The announcer called out the winner of some prize, an autographed boot or something like that. A six-year-old girl. The announcer was sure she was very happy.

At 80’ we sang Keep On Lovin’ You. Around 85’, people in our own sections started leaving.

We can see you, we can see you, we can see you sneaking out!

The match ended 1-1. Girls rushed the rails for autographs. Some miniature Fran Drescher sound-alike near us whined for Alex Maaaw-gan. The team came over for a very short time to sign items. H scarfed our fancy new keeper, who didn’t understand at first that the scarf was a gift for her, so now Angerer has a BAON scarf signed by Angerer.

One-T is their assistant coach now. H scarfed him too. I went over afterward and assured him how much better it’s going to be next week. “We’ll take the point,” he said. No, I clarified, you guys were great; I mean *us*.

We cut down our banners and packed up our souvenir Rutgers football soda cup. A few more players walked by including Sinc. We waved and yelled after them: “Next week!” Sinc called back: “We can’t wait! Looking forward to the tifo! There’s tifo… right?”

A little later we were listening to the crowd on the RSL vs. Timbers match stream. Even with the classless YSA and Puto chants, I was jealous. So jealous, and not a little depressed.

Are we doing something that’s worth doing? I wondered. Within the context of this particular league, is this just stupid? Complete overkill?

I thought about moving that paragraph above about Sinc to here and just stopping. It would have been a way for me to conclude that no, it’s not stupid and no way in hell should we do that—we support the team and the team notices. But the larger situation is more nuanced than that. It’s easy for us to look at what we’ve accomplished in the past and say everyone should do it the way Portland does. By that I don’t mean necessarily the scale, but certainly the passion. If Portland has ten people at an away game, men’s or women’s, and they sing the whole time and they’ve painted a banner and they know the players’ names and who on the opposing team to heckle by name, that all very much counts. The Riveters have brought it at other away games and we always do the job on our home ground. But as our whole experience this weekend made clear, hundreds or even thousands of warm bodies stuck in seats without any history, passion, or context just leads to massive total suck. That won’t inspire teams or keep anybody coming back. But I can’t imagine how hard it must be to turn things around if you’re a supporter in a home location where that’s your starting point.

So yeah, Cloud9 has their work cut out for them. The cross-pollination with ESC is likely a good thing, but they’re going to need not only local folks who can make it out to the venue, but WoSo-savvy charismatic leaders or at least self-starters and a bunch of very loud regulars who can get everyone used to having visible and vocal soccer supporters of all ages at these games. And those people need to relentlessly *be* vocal and visible, even if others around really don’t approve or care. There’s no other way to make their presence part of the team’s culture, encourage rival SGs to do better, and attract more supporters who want women’s soccer support to be more like that and are willing to do the hard work required.

In Portland we’re lucky to be building on an established tradition of fanatical and organized soccer support. if it were us in Cloud9’s shoes, surrounded by annoyed non-supporters and doing our thing in a venue that treated matches as children’s events week after week, I think I get now how draining it would be at times to keep doing it. The soul-suckingness of it got to us really hard, being abandoned like that even by our own team’s fans. Maybe they were led by the press to expect a spectacle, instead of understanding they would need to *be* that spectacle.  More likely they just didn’t care, or even know it was an option to care.

So since then I’ve been rereading Crane and letting her words reassure me that we’re not completely alone and not completely crazy, and when we get home I’ll be able to summon the energy to help make our home opener something the players will remember for a long time. But I’m also rereading Macur, and I think I understand much better now why she came at it the way she did, although I’m not happy about it. Though I strongly disagree with her proposals for stabilizing the league, I think what she saw in Maryland was in some ways unfortunately spot on. The new coach and players considered this outing a success, but we know from our own experience what success can be like and this wasn’t in any way related. In Portland, the Thorns are a Portland team; we recognize them as professionals without hesitation and we are fiercely proud of them. Elsewhere, they are a women’s soccer team, with all the cultural baggage that carries. And it’s got me looking beyond our own city and wondering where WoSo supporters in this country collectively go from here, and how.