The catch-up: The beauty of the "before"

On a tough month, a thrilling NWSL championship weekend, and a striking shift in perspective.

Hi, friends! I hope that you are finding joy and peace and love during this holiday season, because you all deserve it so much. I have missed you immensely. It’s been so long since we’ve caught up that I don’t really even know where to start, but I suppose I’ll start with uncomfortable sincerity.

November was one of the most challenging months of my life. That doesn’t mean it was the worst month of my life; I’ve certainly been at lower points. But it was draining in ways I’d never experienced. There was, of course, the election. I spent the weeks leading up to the election putting in dozens of volunteer hours to help turn North Carolina blue, and, well, we all know how that ended up. Then, exactly one week after the election, I had gastric sleeve surgery¹. I have recovered very well physically from the surgery (so far, knock on wood, etc.), but because of all of the post-op diet rules and restrictions and bodily changes, as well as just the standard trauma that comes with any major surgery, I’ve had to — forgive me for this — hold a lot of space for the mental and emotional parts of the recovery process. It’s been exhausting, and that exhaustion was exacerbated by unexpected family emergencies that allowed me no time to relax due in the immediate weeks before and after the operation. After Thanksgiving, when I had planned to ramp back up on work, I instead had a bit of an unexpected² crash. Fun.

Thankfully, my energy levels are on the rise and my brain fog is lifting, which means I finally get to sort through my many, many feelings and tell you about a bright spot of the past few weeks: My trip to NWSL championship weekend in Kansas City, courtesy of Ally, who paid for a few independent media members, including Power Plays, to attend.

Timing aside, it was an absolutely phenomenal experience. I got a chance to spend time with creators and journalists I admire (like Gal Pal Sports and The Gist!); attend industry events and reconnect with sources and colleagues I haven’t seen in years; talk with Ally executives and get a better understanding of the intricacies of their sponsorship with the league; and witness firsthand the extraordinary growth of the NWSL.

With Lesley Ryder and Emily Anderson of Gal Pal Sports at FanFest.

The last time I attended a NWSL championship game was in 2019, when the North Carolina Courage defeated the Chicago Red Stars 4-0 in front of a sold out crowd of 10,227 fans at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina for their second straight title.

The goal scorers for the Courage in that game? Debinha, Jessica McDonald, Crystal Dunn, and Sam Mewis. The head coach for the Courage? Paul Riley. The head coach for the Red Stars? Rory Dames. The commissioner? Well, there technically wasn’t one, and hadn’t been since Jeff Plush left in 2017; Amanda Duffy was the president. The biggest secondary story that weekend was: Is this Sam Kerr’s last game in the NWSL? (Indeed, it was, barring any late-career surprises.) The game aired on ESPN2 at 4:00pm ET, as opposed to primetime on CBS. There were 166,000 viewers in the United States, as opposed to almost one million for this year’s championship.

Safe to say, a lot has changed in the NWSL since that day. A lot has changed for me, both personally and professionally in the last five year, as well.

Holding space for NWSL championship game MVP Barbra Banda, just because.

In October of 2019 (NWSL seasons were a bit shorter back in those days), I was still living in Washington, D.C., and ThinkProgress, the newsroom where I had worked for over four years, had just been unceremoniously shut down, and I’d been laid off. But I wasn’t frantically job searching; instead, as I watched the Courage celebrate their victory, I was mere days away from launching Power Plays. That means that during the chaos of the last couple of months, this publication’s fifth birthday came and went.

I’ll be honest: I was hoping to ignore this milestone. I have been hyper-focused on my professional shortcomings and failures this year, and being in Kansas City surrounded by other publications and companies that launched around the same time as Power Plays and have skyrocketed past me in terms of audience, fundraising, and influence, exacerbated my imposter syndrome. In bariatric surgery support forums, where I’ve practically lived for the past six months, everyone preaches ad nauseam not to compare your journey with others. I know that’s sound professional advice, too. But in both cases, it’s much easier said than done.

However, as I reflect back on my time in Kansas City now that I’m off my post-op liquid diet and my extreme emotional fluctuations have stabilized a bit (I’m so, so sorry for crying to you Sue Bird, thank you for being so nice!), I see things a bit differently. And I have a handful of veteran NWSL players to thank for the perspective shift.

Finally got to meet the great Sarah Spain in person at the “Just Women’s Sports” party. This was before my tears started, thankfully.

Going into the weekend, I wanted to seek out a few of the more seasoned Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit players to get their memories about the early days of the league, so I could put this season’s growth in context. I expected to be flooded with appalling anecdotes about how awful things used to be.

And look, I did hear some horror stories! Spirit goaltender Nicole Barnhart talked about the lack of facilities and locker rooms her first few years in the league; she had to change in her car in the parking lot before practice and do all her own laundry. Pride left back Carson Pickett recalled living with a host family and sharing one bathroom with both a five and eight-year-old; she often had to go sit in her car just to get privacy. USWNT legend Lauren Holiday vividly remembered the errant bounces the ball would take during FC Kansas City games at Shawnee Mission District Stadium, a stadium that was the home of the local high-school soccer teams.

Just a friendly chat between opponents during the first half of the championship game, which the Pride went on to win 1-0. Thanks to Ally, I had phenomenal seats.

But while I prepared for resentment or bitterness from the players when discussing the league’s pre-billionaire days, I was greeted with a different tone altogether: Gratitude.

“My time here in Kansas City was the best years of my life, truly,” Holiday, who scored in the 2015 World Cup final and won multiple Olympic gold medals, told the audience at the live taping of Sam Mewis’s podcast, “The Women’s Game.” Holiday played for FC Kansas City from 2013-2015, and fondly remembered FC Kansas City fans, the KC Blue Crew, traveling with the team on multiple legs of commercial flights so they could cheer them on at the 2014 and 2015 NWSL championships. “We felt the support, it was incredible. So my time here, they were my favorite memories.”

A standing ovation for Lauren Holiday at the live taping of the “Women’s Game” podcast.

Of course, Holiday was a national team player and the league MVP in 2014; her experience and the accommodations she was provided with were not necessarily the norm. But players of all ilk expressed true appreciation and fondness for the early days, even for wildly amateurish arrangements like living with host families. Tori Huster, a former Spirit star and current NWSLPA president, said she considers her long-time host family her actual family; she even officiated the wedding for one of the kids she lived with. The Pride’s Kylie Strom still keeps in touch with her host family, too; they called to congratulate her when Orlando won its semifinal last month.

“I had the best host families. Actually, they're the most amazing people I've ever met,” Strom said, adding that “without people like that, who are literally willing to open their homes to strangers” the grandeur of the 2024 NWSL championship weekend we all enjoyed in Kansas City wouldn’t have been possible.

“I think they got like, two season tickets. They didn't even get enough tickets for their family,” Strom said. “It was literally the kindness of their heart.”

Spirit forward Brittany Ratcliffe, who made just $7,000 her first year in the NWSL, echoed that sentiment.

“I think even with good and bad experiences, the league isn't around without people that really bought into the sport. I wouldn't have had anywhere to live if I didn't have my host family. It's definitely unconventional, but I think you need to have those growing pains to get the success we have now,” she said.

I did not take many photos in Kansas City, but I made sure to take a photo of this shrimp, even though I couldn’t eat it. I do not remember a shrimp set-up like this in 2019.

Now, look, the point of highlighting these positive memories is not to discount the very real problems players had during those times. Many had horrible experiences with host families, and professionals should never have to play games on high-school soccer fields. But I think these conversations stuck with me because they reminded me that success and struggle are not mutually exclusive notions.

For the first, oh, decade of the NWSL’s existence, there were plenty of years where the best thing the league did overall was survive. There were missteps by management. There were horrific errors of judgement. There was abuse by coaches. There were safety concerns that were ignored. There were awful marketing campaigns, even worse livestreams, and chronically out-of-order toilets. And, amidst that, there were also hundreds of wins along the way; legends were made; beautiful soccer was played; trophies were lifted; fanbases were fortified; young girls and boys were inspired; and, though the path was anything but linear, true progress was made, as is evidenced by today’s $240 million television contract, $250 million valuation for Angel City FC, groundbreaking CBA, and a championship weekend that was overrun with investment from brands and sponsors.

My five-day trip to Kansas City was fueled by bone broth and Premiere Protein shakes. Do not recommend.

So, where does that leave me? Well, I know it’s cheesy as hell, but I’m the type of person that looks for meaning and lessons in everything. The last five years have not gone the way I hoped they would. Some of that is due to external factors, and some of that is due to poor decisions on my part. But I’m still here, chipping away at this career, even getting presented with new opportunities from time to time; Power Plays is still here, making an impact, even if it’s a smaller one than I would like; and so many of you are still here, supporting me with patience and kindness and grace. Five years is a check-in point, not an end point. This year, I took huge, scary steps to improve my health and overall energy levels; and while that journey is still very much in progress, it should enable me to take some big swings professionally in 2025. And I’m better prepared than I ever have been to hit them out of the park.

In Kansas City, I set out to write a story that demonized the past, yet I left with a more empathy and esteem for the “before” than I ever thought possible. Turns out, that’s exactly what I needed.

“You don't want anybody have to go through what we went through in the beginning getting here,” said Spirit goaltender Barnhardt told me. “But there’s a lot of pride in being a part of getting us here.”

The legendary Marta celebrating her first NWSL championship.

1. If you are unaware, the gastric sleeve surgery is a form of weight-loss surgery. I know that weight and body image are sensitive topics, and I promise I will not talk about it frequently and neither this newsletter or my social channels will turn into weight-loss accounts, though I will share occasional updates on my Instagram stories. I decided to be open about this surgery, which so many understandably decide to keep private, because it’s a huge part of my life, and I believe we need more transparency and less stigma around these matters, and because I’ve found the whole process surprisingly empowering.

2. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps this crash was not as unexpected as it seemed at the time.