Editor’s Note: The Portland Timbers are well known for their raucous supporters on matchdays at Providence Park. With 68 straight sellouts (and counting) on their home pitch, the environment is one of the finest soccer experiences in North America.
But what of Timbers fans not in Portland? There’s growing and vibrant supporters groups in Texas, New York, the Midwest and even internationally. As the offseason carries on, here is the story of one fan located in Boston who continues to follow the Timbers from afar.
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Sam McCarty sporting Timbers green in Boston.
It’s a typical Saturday evening in Boston, Massachusetts. Football is on the TV at Parlor Sports, a Cambridge pub where most eyes are locked on the men with the helmets rather than on the ones in the shorts. One screen, however, is tuned in to MLS Direct Kick, and in front of it stands a young, dark-haired woman in a green t-shirt, an axe emblazoned across the front.
The Portland Timbers are on, and Sam McCarty is cheering as green and gold smoke reflects across her glasses.
A native of Milwaukie, Ore., McCarty has always been a soccer fanatic. She began her own career playing for the Milwaukie Soccer Club, eventually helping to coach and volunteer for her neighbors. When the time came, she played for Milwaukie High School eventually for THELO United. College took McCarty away from competitive play, but she remained on recreational teams.
Destined to be a soccer player, becoming a Timbers fan came naturally to McCarty.
“My family loves soccer,” said McCarty. “They are very involved in the soccer community in Milwaukie and supporting the local USL team (the Timbers) was the obvious thing to do.”
So McCarty went to what was then known as PGE Park—now Providence Park—cheering for the home side and barking at their rivals. She was at Timber Jim’s final game in 2008, and experienced the thrill of three points and a raucous chant of Tetris from the North End.
But eventually, it came time to take leave from the home stands.
After college, McCarty found a position with AmeriCorps, a national community service program where the Oregon native got to work with the Let’s Get Movin’ program helping kids learn about fitness and nutrition.
“My main role was facilitating an after school fitness and nutrition program for girls aged 11-14,” said McCarty. “It sounded like the fit for me, and I always wanted to travel and live in new places.”
Of course, away from home and in a new city, McCarty was then met with the challenge of finding a way to watch her beloved Timbers, and on East Coast time no less. That came in the form of Parlor Sports, where McCarty had first gone to watch a March Madness game in 2013.
While with her roommate, she asked the bartender if they would be able to play an MLS match on the TVs. They happily obliged. Parlor just so happened to also be a bit of a soccer bar, one where McCarty says she later learned they had a “soccer nerd” brunch before EPL games on Sundays.
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That made it easy for McCarty to keep up with the Timbers without having to see the raised eyebrows of onlookers after requesting a TV for a Wednesday night match. McCarty said she felt welcomed despite her outsider status.
“It is a place that has people supporting so many different teams it was not uncommon to be the only person watching a seemingly random team,” said McCarty.
So McCarty became the girl in the green kit. She wasn’t strange, and she wasn’t an outsider. She was a regular and a supporter of her team, indicative of how deep the fandom in Portland runs, even from 3,000 miles away.
Over time, she said that making sure she was able to be at Parlor for as many games as she could galvanized all the years she had spent inside Providence Park.
“I always cared about the team but I never had to actively seek out the games (when I lived in Portland)” said McCarty. “Watching games in Boston made me a better fan.”
Now, McCarty’s time at Parlor has come to an end. True to her word and her spirit, she has once again decided to pick up and seek out a new portion of the country. Her two-year stint with AmeriCorps over, she has decided to move to Tennessee with her Boston roommate.
Her Timbers fandom will travel with her. Although she says she doesn’t feel like she’s on the fringe, she’ll try hard to be that girl, wearing the green shirt, cheering for the boys back in the Rose City. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll bring a touch of Portland to the South the way she did in Boston.
“Any time I meet someone who isn’t a soccer fan, I try to convert them,” said McCarty.
