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It has been a month and a half since the end of the National Women's Soccer League season. There hasn't been much news on the Portland Thorns front in the weeks since, so we jumped at the chance to catch up with midfielder Angie Kerr.
A quick refresher: Kerr played in 15 of the Thorns 22 matches in their inaugural season before starting both of the team's playoff matches. Before playing with the Thorns, Kerr played for the University of Portland then later with several professional teams.
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Compared to most soccer leagues, like Major League Soccer, you have a relatively long off season. Is there anything that you want to get to before next season?
It is long and what's nice is that can really take two months off. I usually take September and October off where I just work out if I want to and starting in November I start to really pick it up again and have a regular schedule until preseason.
Personally, right now it is kind of hectic because my husband is actually finishing grad school. He graduates in a month and a half. Right now all of my focus is on that, then we will get to celebrate and go visit the family through the winter time. That is something that we didn't really get to do during the season because it is such a commitment to the team. I think we are really looking forward to going to Montana, where he is from, and just relaxing with family for a lot of December. That will be a nice break before I really start to get pretty intense with my training in January for next season.
When do you expect the preseason to start in 2014?
I would assume that it is going to be similar to last year, maybe closer to the middle of March. I would assume that the season is going to have a sort of similar start time in April. I think the actual date will fluctuate: maybe it will start a little bit later, but usually it has been March when we start preseason.
What do you think is going to be different in the NWSL in 2014?
It is good to see that we are not losing any teams, so going into this next season we still have the same teams that we had previously, so hopefully the fan base can continue to grow. I even expect it to be even bigger in Portland as well, which has been an awesome display of what it could be.
Even though the salaries are really low and everything, I really like that this league is being rather conservative and as long as we don't take any steps backward I think it is looking really good. Hopefully the fan base I can see growing a little bit more going into this next season. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen.
What will it take for the Portland Thorns/Seattle Reign rivalry to compare to the Portland Timbers/Seattle Sounders rivalry?
At some point it would be nice to see the Reign and Sounders come together. I think that helps a lot, because at the Thorns here we have the same staff that work for the Timbers and so I think it is a lot easier to work with that same group of people. So, if they can do that as well in Seattle, I think that they can continue to grow.
That rivalry is definitely there between the teams, so once the fans continue to follow it in Seattle I think it will be not too long until we have something very similar.
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You can find part 1 of the check-in here.