Friday, November 9, 2018

All Done

If you are a frequent reader of my blog posts, you know that Tom and I are soccer fans, and that we are avid supporters of our Seattle Sounders.

The Major League Soccer season (MLS) begins in early March, when we often go to the stadium in the cold and the dark. We feel blessed when it is not raining.

 In summer we enjoy warm day games and daylight evening matches. 

We usually go early, riding the light rail into Pioneer Square Station, where we join up with the March to the Match, always enjoying the camaraderie of fellow supporters in our beautiful city. 
We enjoy the pageantry of the opening of each match and participate in the singing of the National Anthem. 
We cheer the Emerald City Supporters when they deploy their tifo displays. 


This season Tom and I traveled to Vancouver BC, where our Sounders won the Cascadia Cup, a trophy that goes to the top PNW team, Vancouver, Seattle, or Portland. 


This season we also said farewell to our world class veteran, Clint Dempsey, perhaps the greatest of all US soccer players. Even the great ones wear out. 


Our team struggled this season until July, and then came from the bottom of the table to win 14 out of 16 matches to qualify second in the western division for the MLS Cup Playoffs. 

We met our greatest rival, the Portland Timbers, in the semi-final round, an away and a home match. Last night we played the home match. 

It was cold but clear, and many of us gathered in Occidental Park for the march to the match. The crowd was buzzing with enthusiasm. 
Tom and I ate a late dinner of Ivar's chowder and a shared order of fish and chips out on the third level concourse. The hot chowder warmed us in the chilly air. Overhead helicopters were hovering, monitoring the Mueller Protection March. Yes, Seattle is an activist city. 
The stadium filled slowly as fans fought traffic on a Thursday night, but fill it did, with nearly 40,000 of us there to cheer our Sounders on. The atmosphere was electric. 
It was a fury of a match, with all of us spectators on the edges of our seats or standing in tense attention, willing the ball to go into the net. The teams played to a tie, and went into overtime, where the score was tied again. Then it went to a shoot out.

That's where the Sounders came up short. At 11:00 at night, it was all suddenly over. The Portland fans went home elated, and the Sounders fans were disappointed. 

But not too disappointed. In the last two years we had been to the championship both years, winning the MLS Cup one of those years.  It can be someone else's turn. 

This was a crazy season, and an even crazier final. There were disappointing losses and elating wins. There were player injuries and recoveries and come backs and new additions and fond farewells. There were even very few rainy matches. 

When all is said and done, soccer is a game. It is a form of entertainment. We were entertained, indeed. 

11 comments:

  1. Wow! You stayed right to the end. It could so easily have gone the other way. Sounds like the two teams are closely matched in talent. Thanks so much for the inspiring post, Linda. :-)

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  2. It seems to me you have a great attitude.

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  3. That many people in one place would make me nervous. We just began Hockey season here:)

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  4. you are loyal fans. great entertainment and healthy outings...

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  5. You could be a sports caster in your other life!

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  6. That stadium is amazing. It takes my breath away. It's beautiful. Seattle is beautiful! I can't even imagine sitting way up there in those top seats. Love the singing of the National Anthem. You and Tom are the greatest. Very special.

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  7. I enjoy watching a baseball game once in a while (the sport I have access to) but I don't really have any deep feeling or loyalties about it. I think I would like to see a soccer game in a stadium. It makes more sense than U.S. football, at least to me. I don't think I will ever be a sports fan at your level, but I understand the entertainment value.

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  8. An exciting season! What will you do with yourselves now that the garden is tucked in for winter and there are no more Sounders matches to attend until March? Must be why they invented the holidays.

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  9. Soccer is one of the few team sports that I can enjoy....not being a big sports person.

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  10. Even though you didn't win the cup, that your team won 14 out of 16 to climb into contention had to have been a thrill. There is always next year. Hey, March isn't that far off.

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  11. I understand your enthusiasm for your team and the sport, as I'm a die-hard Saskatchewan Roughrider fan (the other football). Though I'll admit I prefer to stay in my warm home and watch it on television. They play today in the first of the play-off games, the temperature is hovering around -10C (14F) but feels more like -20C(-4F) with the wind. I'm hoping for a good defensive game, with a win by the Riders of course, as our last game was a blow-out (31-0) for the Winnipeg Bombers.

    Enjoy the off season and good luck to the Sounders next year!

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