Oh Christine Sinclair! our captain!

Twelve years with the Portland Thorns ended like this. Sinclair will don the red jersey for her final league match on Friday, where she hopes to help her team secure a spot in the NWSL playoffs with a win against Angel City FC.

Beyond the results, however, the match will serve as a farewell match for Sinclair: Olympic gold medalist, Canadian legend and scorer of the most international goals of any soccer player.

She is also an icon for the Portland soccer community. In fact, a significant part of Portland football history – from the University of Portland Bluffs to Goose Hollow Stadium – can be traced through Sinclair’s career. She played her college game for the Pilots, helping them win national championships in 2002 and 2005 and earning numerous individual honors. As the only player from the Thorns’ inaugural 2013 squad who is still with the team, Sinclair is also the longest-tenured Thorn; she leads the franchise in goals by a 40-goal margin, and she has been with the club through all three league championships and the ups and downs in between.

“I love Portland,” Sinclair wrote in his memoir, Play the long game. “I play for Portland. I love the fans, I love the Thorns organization and I love everything about the city. I love representing him.

Sinclair is also known to be a private person. Even in her memoir, she focuses more on the teams she was a part of rather than delving into her own life.

So what better way to remember Sinclair than through the eyes of those who joined him along the way?

One of Mackenzie Grover’s favorite memories is standing alongside the Rose City Riveters in the Portland fan section to cheer on Sinclair. “She looks like she wishes she could fall to the ground,” Grover says. “She said to me: “Why are you paying attention to me? Yes, I did something amazing, but please stop looking at me.

For Avi, a longtime Thorns fan who first saw Sinclair play at UP, watching her play a full career in Portland was a gift. “You feel better,” Avi says, “when you see her on the field.”

Former Thorns head coach Mark Parsons says the consistency and high level of play reflects the purpose Sinclair brings to coaching. It’s something that stood out to him during his first days with the team in 2016, and it’s the first thing he brought up nearly nine years later.

Throughout his six years with the club, Parsons learned an essential first lesson for offensive players working on their finishing: watching Sinclair practice.

“She’s a special, special player,” he said. “He’s a special, special person. But she achieved it through her world-class foundational knowledge and training with this work ethic that I probably haven’t seen in anyone else.

Parsons has seen the Thorns go through a pretty successful run, to put it mildly. They came in first in the league in 2016 and 2021 and won an NWSL championship in 2017. But one of the moments that stood out the most was Portland’s 2016 semifinal loss to Western New York Flash in overtime. It was a wild and intense match at a sold-out Providence Park, with fans booing the referee for every missed call.

“There were probably five seconds left,” Parsons said, “and I felt like we were going to win again.” And I had the impression that all the players and all the fans in the stadium believed that we were going to win.

But the Thorns fell behind early in this game, then the Flash doubled their lead. Just after the second goal, Sinclair turned to the defenders and asked them to pass her the ball. “I don’t remember his words, but it was, ‘Send me the damn ball, please!'” Parsons says. “We got the game going on the field. Sinclair has been there, slamscored an incredible goal then rushed towards the crowd. Basically, she put the team and this whole stadium on her back.

Portland lost the game 4-3. Parsons said for the first and only time in his coaching career, he was at a loss for words. But Sinclair wasn’t. She told the team that they had to be graceful in the face of defeat. Next year, she told the team, they were going to win it all. They did it.

“I love how low-key she is as a captain,” says fan Sunny Jaynes, who has followed the Thorns since the team’s inception. But Jaynes said they also love the moments when Sinclair shows up in front of everyone, like she did when the Thorns returned to Providence Park to celebrate winning the 2022 championship. Sinclair, on the microphone, announced that ‘she would return to the Thorns for the 2023 season, “to win a fourth” (she pointed to Portland’s latest hardware) “and fuck Seattle.”

“I loved it,” Jaynes said. “She’s fierce but always discreet.”

Coley Lehman’s Sinclair moment is actually about their daughter, Daisy. “She was 3 when the league started,” they say, “and she always loved Christine Sinclair. »

After one match, Lehman said, Sinclair threw his cleat at Daisy. An adult standing near Daisy grabbed it and Sinclair waved Daisy over until the shoe was in the right hands. Lehman and Daisy stayed later to get Sinclair’s autograph on the cleat. “Daisy slept in this boot for years,” says Lehman.

My favorite Sinclair moment was in August 2019, when Thorns and Portland Timbers fans were fighting the Portland front office for the right to display the Iron Front logo – an anti-fascist symbol with roots in resistance to Nazi Germany – in the stands. As she entered the stadium that day, Sinclair wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with the Iron Front, surrounded by a rainbow circle. It wasn’t a big, flashy statement, but it was a visible show of support for the club’s supporters and the anti-fascist message they supported.

This moment tells the story of Sinclair’s career: She didn’t want the spotlight, but she knew exactly what to do with it.

Next match: vs. Angel City FC, 7 p.m. PT, Friday, November 1 at Providence Park.