Portland will soon have what may be the first-of-its-kind training facility purpose-built for female athletes. RAJ Sports, the owners of the Portland Thorns, are building several soccer pitches, basketball courts, and more to serve the Thorns and the new WNBA franchise team. Karina LeBlanc, executive vice president of strategic growth for RAJ Sports, joins us to discuss the new facility and the future of women’s sports in Portland.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland area will soon have a new state-of-the-art athletic training facility, one built specifically for female athletes. RAJ Sports, which owns both the Portland Thorns and Portland’s as yet unnamed WNBA team, announced recently that they’re creating a site on 12 acres in Hillsboro. It’ll have two full soccer fields, two basketball courts and 60,000 square feet of training facility.
Karina LeBlanc is a former goalie and general manager for the Thorns. She’s now the executive vice president of strategic growth for RAJ Sports. She joins us now to discuss the new facility and the future of women’s sports in Portland. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Karina LeBlanc: Thanks, happy to be here.
Miller: So I led with a practice facility, but I want to start with some breaking news. Just today, the Thorns announced that Ring, the Amazon owned home security company, is going to be the new front of the jersey sponsor, replacing Providence Healthcare which has been there for 12 seasons. Why did the team make this switch?
LeBlanc: Listen, this is a landmark multi-year sponsorship deal. If anybody’s been following women’s sports, right now is the time where we’re able to do game-changing things. And the opportunity came about with Ring because they’re forward thinking like we are. They love the Rose City. We have initiatives called Ring Around the Rose City. And people who want to do groundbreaking things are the people we’re partnering with. So what an opportunity now to do something that’s a landmark, that’s game-changing. And especially here in Portland.
I’m a bit biased, I played for Portland, I know the passion of the city. I know how people get around, especially women’s sports. I think this city changed the trajectory of women’s soccer in this country. And it’s just one of those things where there’s just an opportunity to engage with the community, enhance the fan experience and just do things that are, like I said, game-changing. That’s my word of the day!
Miller: It’s not new for companies to put their names on sports jerseys. So what’s landmark or game-changing about this?
LeBlanc: Well, first of all, it’s unique, specific to women’s sports. And we have some programs where we’ll engage with the local businesses and empowerment, make Portland as a city better.
But the biggest thing, just as the practice facility – which is what we’ll soon talk about – it’s the opportunity to do things in a different way with women-focused, women in mind, women leading. And how we entered this conversation was literally like “How do we do things differently? How do we do things with the brands and the names that we already have, but in a unique way?” There’s the Thorns Women’s Coalition, there’s LeadHERs of Tomorrow, where we’re going to engage with leaders around the community, do shadow programming, have front office things. And then especially for women, to feel safe at home, right? The home for our players will be the practice facilities, for them to feel safe. And I think whenever women feel safe, seen and heard, you’re going to get game-changing things. And that’s one of the priorities that we had going into it.
It’s also connected to all of Portland. Making sure the city is what we all love about Portland, doing intentional things with volunteers, females in mind, to beautify soccer fields and community cleanups. But also very specific to what the athletes want as well.
Miller: I’ve read that this new facility is going to be purpose-built for female athletes. So what does that mean in practice? What is a physical example of how this facility is going to be different from one where men were the default clients, the default athletes?
LeBlanc: What changes all of this is that you have a lot of new practice facilities being built in the NWSL, and then you have new practice facilities built in the WNBA. But with RAJ Sports, and what the Bhathal family has been able to do, the ownership group, is the first ownership group that’s having both of these top female sports. So you have soccer and basketball.
I’ve been honored to play at a couple of Olympics and win an Olympic medal. I remember having a meal in the Olympic village, so I could go sit and have another meal with all my soccer teammates, or at my right hand side with Serena and Venus Williams. I chose to go and have lunch with Serena and Venus Williams. And what will happen is when people walk into this facility … and I keep saying it’s not just a facility, it’s what’s possible. When you walk into this building, immediately, whether you’re a man or a woman, it will feel different. So the 80-year-old woman who wasn’t even allowed to play sports, she’ll walk into this building knowing how things have changed. I was blessed to play professional sports for almost 20 years. But I never had a place where it could be basketball and soccer.
These athletes will walk in and on the left hand side, you’re going to have the kitchen, where it’s chefs making food intentionally for women and the women’s body, and what they need to be successful. And then the athletes themselves, it’s gonna be like an Olympic village. They’re just gonna be having breakfast and lunch, and starting in conversations where that high performance mindset of every single day, you want to be better in some way, shape or form. And what happens when you get to sit and exchange stories and best practices.
Then you’ll walk down and you’ll have two soccer fields on the left-hand side. And in the middle, before you get to the basketball area, you’ll have the performance center, the performance core. What’s interesting, only 6% of data done right now is specific for women. Already in this building, you will have sports science, performance. And they don’t have to go to conferences to exchange best practices. They get to do it right there. And all of that is, again, intentional for women.
Then you get to the WNBA area. And again, it’s athlete-centric, athletes first, women first. We know that we are the first and only ownership group to have both these professional sports. And hopefully more will come. But we get to do this groundbreaking in the epicenter of women’s sports. And that’s what Portland is, right? Let’s be honest, you’ve got the biggest brands there, Nike and a bunch of the other ones. Now, you have the top athletes with the NWSL. And The Portland Thorns – again, I think our club changed the trajectory of women’s soccer in this country. Now we have a facility. And it wasn’t an ownership group just coming in and saying, “hey, we’re going to invest,” and that’s it. Now, they’ve come in and they’ve built a practice facility, the first of its kind, and they’re leading the way. But we want other people to follow us. We’re getting to do this right here in this town called Portland, Oregon.
Miller: Will the public have any access to this big, beautiful new facility?
LeBlanc: Absolutely. I think that was the biggest point. Even when we talk about this monumental deal, it’s how do we engage with our community? And I can tell you firsthand, the reason I loved playing for Portland was that there’s no city like this. We call ourselves Soccer City USA, because of the way the fans show up. As an athlete, when you can step outside and you’re hearing chants of your name, and the energy and the pride the city has for its athletes, we knew that we had to find a way of engaging the community.
So we open to the public. You can walk in and you can experience, I keep saying game-changing opportunities. But we’ll also have community engagements on the fields. Like, we’re not doing this for us. And I think that’s the biggest thing from the Bhathal family is that they came in here and they fell in love with the city. They understood the importance of what sports means to the city, and the importance of what these female athletes mean to the city. So absolutely, we’ll have the opportunity to engage with the community, engage with our fans and, most importantly, engage with that next generation.
When I go out to the park with my 4-year-old daughter, you see 10- and 11-year-old boys with female jerseys on, and they don’t know different. We are, in what we’re doing, helping change – for the world it’s different – in our city of Portland, what’s normal, and normalizing that women can have a space that they call their own, that’s worth $150 million. They can have sponsorship deals on the front of their jerseys that are game-changing things.
And what we’re doing here in Portland – and I feel so passionate about this, you can probably hear – is because I know this is personal to Portland. We’re not the New York’s and the L.A.’s, but we’re Portland and we’re doing big things.
Miller: How many season tickets have you already sold for this [WNBA] team that doesn’t yet have a name?
LeBlanc: Trust me, we want to have a name by now, too.
We’re at over 8,000. And when I get to travel around the country and the world, I get to talk about Portland because, look at that, we don’t have a name, but the city’s like “we’re gonna do it big.” We’re a city of disruptors. We love when people say we can’t do anything, cause that’s when we show up big. And I think it’s a testament to the human beings in our area. It’s a testament to the athletes. And what’s exciting about that is that when we’re going out and talking to agents and recruiting, and they hear that stat they’re like “wait, what?” Because other cities, it takes them so long to get there. But for Portland, it’s about the family atmosphere. We have our season tickets, we just had small packages go on sale yesterday.
We want to really make sure that when fans come to the game, they experience a moment that they don’t forget. And it’s the same thing for athletes. When I played, everybody hated coming here, but they loved coming here to Portland. Because as female athletes, a lot of the times, it would be the only time they get a close to sellout game. And that’s what we’re gonna experience with the WNBA team, and that’s because it’s so personal to the city.
Miller: There are a bunch of news articles over the last five months or so that have potential names that folks have put forward, or various pontificators have put forward. They include Portland Fire, Portland Rosebuds, Portland Pathfinders, Rose City Royalty, Rose City Riveters. Are any of these in the running right now?
LeBlanc: They all are. Breaking news, the new name is … ! No, I honestly, I think we all wish we could tell everybody. But it’s been a beautiful process. And I think I’ve shared enough about this family group to know that it’s important that what we come up with is a name that the city would feel proud of. And I know that the city’s proud of the Thorns, and that’s the same pathway we want to continue taking as we move forward.
Miller: When do you think a name will be announced?
LeBlanc: When the name is going to be announced … I’ll tell you when it’s announced. [Laughter]
Miller: We’ll know you’ve announced it because you will have announced it, OK. I will move on to another line of questioning because I don’t think I’m going to get blood from this particular stone.
What do you imagine it’s going to be like when this team, whatever its name is, has its first game at the Moda Center in not that long, 15 months or something?
LeBlanc: I go back to my first game with the Thorns, walking out on the game field. I’m in my office right now and I have a poster from that game. The energy was electrifying. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And I think the people who were there that day, they’ll never forget. And I imagine the moment to be like that, in a different way, because like when you have an arena and it’s enclosed, it’s a different feeling.
I think it’s just gonna be a moment where hopefully everybody wants to have a ticket in that arena, and they’ll get to talk about it for many years to come. The city doesn’t do average when it comes to women’s sports. And I think to have a seat on that day and to experience it, the goosebumps, the potential tears. I’ve told you the stories of, for so long women have been told they can’t. And it came through allyship of men, so it won’t just be women in the stadium, it’ll be the men who support the women.
But I think in that moment, everybody probably will be on their feet. I imagine tears falling. I imagine dreams starting to be made with the next generation. I imagine a moment where we’re all proud of our city, a moment where the athletes are honored and proud to be a part of that moment. And hopefully, it’s a moment that, many years from now, we’ll be talking about, like, I’m talking back in 2013 when I walked out in the stadium. We’ll be talking about many years from now, like, “do you remember that moment?” And we’ll all get to be there.
Miller: Karina LeBlanc, thanks very much.
LeBlanc: Thanks for having me. Go Thorns!
Miller: Karina LeBlanc is executive vice president of strategic growth for RAJ Sports.
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