A Thorny Trip The The NWSL Title

Year after year, talented players of music move to Memphis to launch their careers in Music City.

After her junior year at Germantown High School, Cindy Parlow left Memphis, TN, for Chapel Hill, NC, to follow her dream.

Memphis had been home for her as she grew up and fell in love with soccer, eventually playing club soccer with Memphis FC.

But the North Carolina Tar Heels were winning national championships in Chapel Hill, and when the call came, she answered it.

Her roommate that freshman year at UNC was another early departure from high school, Greensboro’s (NC) Siri Mullinix.

They shared similar dreams, and many of those dreams came true. They played on national championship teams, and were starters for the U.S. Women’s National Team. Parlow was twice named the MAC Hermann Trophy winner, symbolic of Division I Player of the Year.

They both played professionally in the Women’s United Soccer Association. Parlow with the Atlanta Beat and Mullinix with the Washington Freedom.

Hit the speed button forward, and eventually both became soccer coaches. Mullinix is now an assistant coach at Clemson. Parl[show_disconnected][show_to accesslevel=’Subscriber’]ow, who has added Cone to her last name, is the head coach of the Portland Thorns, recent winners of the first National Women’s Soccer League championship.

Parlow Cone is well aware of where she came from, and Memphis will always be her childhood hometown, but over time, Chapel Hill had become her home.

When her playing career came to an end it was Chapel Hill where she returned. Slowly, she began the transition to coaching, first with youth soccer and then as a volunteer assistant coach at UNC.

Despite being part of the coaching staff that produced three national championship teams in 2008-09 and in 2012, she had never been a head coach.

So when the new women’s professional league launched, and the call came from Portland, she found the opportunity compelling, and still felt drawn to stay where home was.

Her life had also changed. In 2007 she married John Cone, so there were family considerations.

But a trip to Portland sealed the deal, and she would answer the call and take the opportunity that was being offered in a place called the City of Roses.

There she found that the people had an amazing enthusiasm for the game of soccer. Support for the MLS Portland Timbers was well documented, but she was surprised at the support for this new women’s team that had not yet been formed.

“It was an environment I wanted to be a part of,’ Parlow Cone, now 35, said in an interview with espnW. “I also felt like this was the last opportunity for us to really get professional women’s soccer right in the U.S. I wanted to do everything I could to help that succeed.”

She was one of the ’99ers, the team that won the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup and was a founding member of the WUSA, which folded after three seasons. She watched from the outside as the Women’s Professional Soccer came and folded after three years.

Parlow Cone may not have had a lot of experience as a coach, but she knew players. Talented players. She had played for the U.S. WNT 158 times, scoring 75 goals.

“I understand where the players are coming from,” said Parlow Cone after taking the job.

Putting the team together was also a new experience and responsibility for her. It did not hurt that the USA’s Alex Morgan and Canada’s Christine Sinclaire, two of the top goalscorers in the world, were allocated to her team, now known as Thorns FC.

On paper the team looked great, and the fans embraced the Thorns. The team drew an average home attendance of 13,300, more than three times the league average.

After a fast start, Parlow Cone’s team slipped a bit midway through the inaugural season. Still they tied with the Western New York Flash and FC Kansas City, each with 38 points (11-6-5), on top of the final regular season standings.

Seeded third and carrying some key injuries, especially with Morgan, the Thorns survived a couple of gut checks to advance through postseason play to win the league title.

First came the semifinals. Down 2-0 against Kansas City, Portland rallied for three goals to win and advance.

Then in the championship game, against a loaded Western New York Flash led by Abby Wamback and Carli Lloyd, they played the final 33 minutes with only 10 players after defender Kathryn Williamson received a red card for a take-down tackle of Wambach.

Goals from another Tar Heel, Tobin Heath, and from Sinclaire gave the Thorns a 2-0 lead, and Canadian goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc made key saves to make it hold up until the final whistle.

“We had our share of injuries, we had our share of adversty,” Parlow Cone said. “But you know, this team never wavered, they never lost sight of the end goal and that was to win a championship and they did it.”

Portland got the championship, and their rookie coach got something she didn’t have when she took the job. Experience as a head coach.