One of my first roles when I started at Hot Time, was covering the Red Stars and the newly created NWSL. Every home game, I’d trundle down 355 to Lisle in my beat-up Toyota to watch Lori Chlupny, Karina LeBlanc, and Christain Press ply their trade in the fledgling league still feeling the aftereffects of the collapse of the WPS three years earlier.
Despite moving away from the beat in 2016, I’ve always kept an eye on the club, partly as a palette cleanser for oftentimes despicably poor Chicago Fire sides, but partly because I could be a fan, rather than a journalist or pundit.