West Chester’s Phoebe McClernon reaches the NWSL title game with OL Reign — and with the Union’s help

The player who might be the NWSL's biggest Philly sports fan grew up playing for a now-defunct girls team the Union ran. Now she plays with Megan Rapinoe, Rose Lavelle and more stars in Seattle.

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Nov. 10, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Having spent most of this year on the west coast, West Chester’s Phoebe McClernon has a few messages to send back home.

The first is that she’s playing in the NWSL championship game for Seattle’s OL Reign on Saturday, against Gotham FC in San Diego (8 p.m., CBS3, Paramount+).

The second is that if anyone asks who the biggest Philly sports fan in the NWSL is, McClernon will gladly answer.

“It’s me,” she said triumphantly in an interview with The Inquirer this week. “My whole Twitter feed is just Philadelphia sports.”

A survey of her account on what’s now called X proves that quickly. But for all her love of the Eagles, Phillies, 76ers, and Flyers, her most interesting personal story is connected to the city’s fifth pro team.

Before McClernon rose from Academy of Notre Dame de Namur to the University of Virginia and then the pros, the now-25-year-old defender spent a while playing for a Union Juniors girls’ team. The program existed in the Union’s very first years, and hasn’t for a while. Her coaches included current Union manager Jim Curtin and under-14 boys coach Phil Karn, and former YSC Academy director Ian Munro.

Contemporaries as players included Marissa Sheva, of the Washington Spirit and Sellersville; MacKenzie Pluck, of Angel City FC and North Wales; and Senan Farrelly, younger brother of Sinead Farrelly of Havertown and Gotham FC.

Looking back and forward

“The Union gave me so many opportunities,” McClernon said. “I definitely wouldn’t be the player I am today without Union Juniors. Jim Curtin, I used to do individuals [training sessions] with him — like, that’s crazy to me, that he was doing individuals with a 12-year-old Phoebe McClernon.”

Coincidentally, she was speaking with The Inquirer while this reporter was in the press box at Wednesday’s Union playoff game at New England. She knew it, and was rooting for her hometown team from afar. Curtin mentioned after the game that he remembered coaching her.

With so much interest now in pushing the NWSL to improve at youth development, it was natural to ask McClernon what she’d think if a women’s team could build an academy like the Union’s.

“I really can’t even fathom it,” she said. “It’s expensive to play soccer, especially if you’re a good player, and there’s so many people that just don’t get the opportunity and never get to experience that. … I really can’t imagine how much better the game would get if girls had that type of opportunity.”

As for McClernon’s current team, the Reign are as big a deal as the NWSL has: the star power of Megan Rapinoe, Rose Lavelle, and Jessica Fishlock and a marquee manager in Laura Harvey. They’ve long been one of the league’s powers but were snakebitten in the playoffs for years until now.

McClernon played a big role in this year’s breakthrough, sending the assist to Veronica Latsko for the quarterfinal-winning goal at Angel City FC. Now, she might be standing on the field at the end of Rapinoe’s final game as a player, as the American legend will retire afterward.

“It’s just crazy the opportunities and the teams that I’ve gotten to play on,” said McClernon, who previously played for the Orlando Pride with Alex Morgan and Marta. “I have to like pinch myself every couple of minutes and be like, ‘Is this real? Am I actually passing them on to Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle?’ This is crazy.”

But it’s also serious.

“This is just the environment that I want to be in, and I’m going to keep getting better, and they are the standard,” she said. “So to be able to be lifted by them, especially on the field in a game as a teammate, is a whole different thing that I never thought I would have ever had the opportunity to do when I was a little girl.”

On Saturday, McClernon’s mother, Lisa, sisters, Haley and Farrell, and brother, Dillon, will be in the stands to watch it all in person. (She noted that her father, Kevin, a devoted reader of The Inquirer’s soccer coverage, won’t be there and teased him about it.)

Settling in Seattle

McClernon had lots of praise for Harvey, who’s been a runner-up for the U.S. women’s national team job twice in a row. Though there were plenty of reasons for U.S. Soccer to pick Vlatko Andonovski and then Emma Hayes, if Harvey continues to succeed in the NWSL, her time surely will come some day.

“I think you hear the term ‘a player’s coach’ thrown around a lot, and I don’t even know what the connotation of it would be, but in Laura’s case, it’s pretty much all positive,” McClernon said. “She really makes this team feel like a family because of how much investment she has in each of us individually. And she’s obviously one of the best minds in the game right now — she’s really pushing things as far as women’s soccer goes, and it’s been a privilege to play under her.”

McClernon isn’t the only Philly-area native on the Reign’s roster. Sickerville, N.J.’s, Tziarra King is there too, and happens to be the same age, 25. They’ve known of each other for a long time, from the youth soccer circuit to rival college teams when King was at North Carolina State.

“She was a menace in college,” McClernon said. “It’s been cool to be able to track her journey alongside mine. We kind of took a lot of the same steps, I guess you would say, and she’s awesome.”

As a bonus, McClernon added, “having somebody to root for the Birds or the Phils or the Sixers with is definitely fun too.”

And as for whether her hometown should have a NWSL team some day?

“Yeah, I think there ought to be one,” McClernon said. “Why not? Why wouldn’t we? It’s coming. It’ll get there. I don’t have any doubt about it. I think Philly will be a market soon enough.”

While it’s no secret that the Union wouldn’t be the lead financial backers of a NWSL team here, McClernon credited the team for laying a foundation that can benefit women’s soccer too.

“The support that they’ve gotten from the Philadelphia area actually was shocking to me,” she said. “Because we’re so obsessed with basketball, football, and baseball that I really didn’t think we would have any fandom to extend on to soccer. And it was always such a fun realization that the city really did get behind soccer just as much.”