PORTLAND, Ore. – As thousands of Portland Timbers fans gathered together on SW Broadway, the excitement in the air was as evident as the rain.
“PT-FC,” the crowd chanted. Soon that chant spread south, from SW Washington to SW Alder to SW Morrison, getting louder and louder from moment to moment.
When the open-air flatbed truck carrying the Timbers players and staff finally made its way past Portland's historic Pioneer Square, the crowd began to follow in its wake, Pied Piper-like. They danced and sang and cheered the players who held the trophy aloft from the truck.
Parents pulled children out of school, others carried their toddlers and babies on their backs or pushed them along in strollers, and the elderly braved the rain and wind, all for a chance to witness something unique: the first championship in Timbers franchise history and the first victory parade for a Portland sports team since the 1977 NBA Championship for the Portland TrailBlazers.
“We figured it was a once in a lifetime—hopefully more than once in a lifetime!—thing, but it seemed like it was OK to miss a little bit of school to come down and support the team,” said Timbers fan Shannon Miranda, who pulled her son Miles from school to be at the parade.
Head coach Caleb Porter made his way to the back of the truck platform to celebrate with the players. When he saw the enormous crowd trailing behind the bus, he put a hand over his heart. Soon the crowd began chanting Porter's name and the coach, visibly moved almost to the point of tears, quietly gestured for them to stop.
Timbers supporter Quentin Contreras, recognizable among the legions of Timbers fans in his Stetson cowboy hat, said that the feeling among the fans before Sunday's victory was that this was destiny and the Timbers would not be denied.
“After half time, I think they'd settled in, and I leaned over to my wife and said, 'We got this,'” Contreras recalled.
Contreras, who sits in the last row of Section 217, said he's shared a number of “hello’s” and “good game’s” with general manager Gavin Wilkinson and owner Merritt Paulson over the course of this season. He said it's been especially gratifying to see how the two of them have helped Portland bring home this trophy.
“Merritt Paulson is Portland,” he said. “That's what he wanted for the city.”
After approximately 30 minutes, the bus rolled its way up Broadway and as it neared its final destination, defender Taylor Peay held the MLS Cup trophy off the edge of the bus and invited fans to come and touch it. This, his gesture seemed to say, was as much their trophy as it was his and his teammates'.
The fans agreed, roaring their approval as they danced and sang in unison behind the bus.
Even after the team reached SW Madison and sped away down the road, the fans still refused to leave the streets, hugging and high-fiving and losing their voices all over again.
