Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

It has been a while since the last edition of this here newsletter.

We’ve had a sports equinox, including a World Series, the start of the NBA and NHL seasons, and now two full rounds of the NWSL playoffs.

There have been elections and Epstein emails and all sorts of big news stories.

The main reason I’m behind on the newsletter, though, relates to none of that, but still means the world to me.

But first, here’s someone else who means the world to me: Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s marriage!

Part of why I have been so busy is the planning and celebration of our wedding!

My now-wife Abby and I have been together for seven years. But we made things official in the last few weeks, exchanging vows in a private ceremony with just us and a photographer in late October, then hosting a small group family and friends last weekend for a dinner party and weekend of celebrations.

It is very, very hard to condense an explanation of how marriage feels into just a few words. But it is the honor of my life to be part of it with someone I love so much and I have been overwhelmed with a level of joy that I did not even fully comprehend before entering into it.

It was incredibly emotional to share in these moments with Abby but people are so willing to bring their love to other people. I have been honored and in awe of the outpouring of love that family, friends and even strangers have shared with us.

In times like these that can be very tough, even someone else’s marriage can do so much for so many people. A coworker of mine referred to it as “a light in the darkness,” which has sat with me.

It is so, so crucially important to find that light in the darkness. I have definitely found mine in formally enshrining the eternal bond I have with the person I love most in my life. And I always hope that you can find your light as well.

Anyway, a lot of people can find light and hope in sports, especially so in 2025 Washington, DC. So on to the usual stuff!

My Reporting

NWSL Playoffs

Thanks to a fantastic team performance, the Washington Spirit are heading to their second-straight NWSL Championship game after a 2-0 win in DC on Saturday against the Portland Thorns.

Washington fully anticipated Portland’s style of play, shutting down the Thorns’ dynamic midfield and relying on some stellar play from their wingers to keep up a nearly relentless attacking threat.

It took a goal being called back for an offside and several strong early chances until the Spirit scored, but in the 27^th minute, a play in the Spirit’s own defensive end turned into an opportunity.

Spirit midfielder Hal Hershfelt headed out a Thorns corner kick. As the strong header bounced nearly a third of the way downfield, it allowed winger Rosemonde Kouassi to beat her defenders and use every bit of her speed to barely keep the ball inbounds and run nearly the full length of the field wide open.

With only Portland goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold to beat, Kouassi waited until the last moment to slide the ball to her left to a streaking Gift Monday, who nudged it into the net for a goal.

Inside Audi Field, it was an eruption of joy, as the sold-out crowd of 19,365 hit a crescendo of cheers, and two mobs of Spirit players emerged—one around Monday, who was met also by a few warming-up Spirit substitutes, and one around Kouassi, who fell to the ground in what seemed like a mix of joy and exhaustion.

As the game advanced and the clock ticked down, the Spirit defense settled in, showing an evolution from their early-season inconsistencies.

The team that gave up 12 goals in a four-game span earlier this season suffocated the Thorns’ attackers, allowing just three shots on target. The Spirit’s defensive unit regularly shut down Portland’s efforts to advance the ball to forwards trying to get behind their back line, with players even correcting their own miscues.

“I feel like that’s always something in the back of my head, like if I make a mistake, I’m gonna be the first one to fix it, regardless of how ugly it might look sometimes,” defensive midfielder Hal Hershfelt said.

Center back Esme Morgan said postgame she felt like it was a performance that showed off many of the improvements they made in the back half of the season and that the great defense started in front of her from forwards and midfielders.

“We pressed really well, we jumped out at the right moments and just suffocated them, and I felt like we won the ball inside their half so, so many times, so it actually didn’t get to having to defend the box and emergency defend too much until maybe the end of the game,” Morgan said.

Despite missing starting fullback Gabby Carle to injury, the Spirit got a career day from Kate Wiesner, who filled up the defensive box score with three tackles, two recoveries, a clearance, and a game-high three interceptions.

And although she is normally a forward, Kouassi led the team with five tackles while being officially listed in the starting lineup as a defender. 

Although the Spirit maintained control through most of the affair, it took until the 83^rd minute for them to find a second goal to ice the game. A counter-attack by the Spirit left Croix Bethune with a pretty open field in front of her. Thorns keeper Mackenzie Arnold came well out of the 18-yard box to try to stop her, but missed, allowing Bethune to waltz toward an empty net.

From just a few yards away, with defenders struggling to catch up, the midfielder emphatically launched the ball into the net to seal the 2-0 win.

“The defender kinda scuffled and mishit the ball and I just kept running, beat the keeper and at that point I’m like, ‘yeah, I’m rocketing this in the back of the net,’” Bethune said.

Throughout the game, it was clear to those in the stadium and hearing it on TV just how much of a home-field advantage the Spirit crowd could offer. Sure, they erupted after goals or major saves. But they also offered raucous cheers for well-timed tackles, good recoveries, and passes out of dangerous situations. I have seen it come close in last year’s playoff games, but with the mix of knowledge and passion in just about every seat, I have never seen a crowd so dialed into a Spirit game as the folks who filled Audi Field on Saturday.

When the final whistle blew, it opened the door to exactly the sort of bombastic celebration you would expect from a place players, fans and media alike call “Rowdy Audi.”

Players dashed toward the supporters’ section, dancing and cheering along with the Spirit Squadron. Some launched balls into the crowd, while others danced or hugged teammates. Following the lead of defender Esme Morgan, who climbed into the supporters section to celebrate after last week’s thrilling penalty shootout win vs Racing Louisville, Croix Bethune followed suit this week, climbing into the crowd and planting the Spirit Squadron’s flag onto the capo stand with authority.

“That was my inspiration, it looked like so much fun,” Bethune said.

And it gave the young midfielder, who with a listed height of 5’3” is one of the smaller players on the roster, a bit of a different angle on things.

“It was a lot of fun, great view. It’s a different view from, like, being low, and seeing up high. I felt tall,” she laughed.

“For once,” Morgan, who is listed at 5’10”, chimed in.

During the celebration, I had positioned myself in a good spot to capture some of the joy, as I squeezed in between the front of the supporters’ section and the wall separating the crowd from the field. Players came right over to allow me to snap some pictures that captured the unbridled joy and the celebrations.

Midfielder Hal Hershfelt was one of the first players to run over to the supporters’ section. An extremely expressive player who occasionally lets frustration gets the best of her, the photos I got captured her infectious enthusiasm.

“It was crazy because I was like, ‘I can’t feel my legs right now,’ Hershfelt said about the moment she ran over. “But then everyone started running to the supporters and I was like, ‘we’re running, I guess!’”

She added that it meant a lot to put in such a complete performance in their last home game of the season.

“They deserve that,” Hershfelt said. “They show up day in and day out, and I know it hasn’t always been pretty since the beginning of the season, but to gut that out like we did, it just means the world.”

The team ran around the field to cheer and applaud with every corner of the crowd. Star forward Trinity Rodman, who played just a few minutes as she works her way back from injury, commandeered a camera that she bolted around the stadium with. Since Rodman’s contract expires at the end of this season and rumors are flying that she may play in Europe next year, it may have been her capturing the last time she plays at home in a Spirit uniform.

When I asked her about the emotion of coming into a game like this, was quick to note that although the crowd support goes well beyond her, it does mean a lot to hear the cheers for her.

“I think the support for every single player is amazing, and obviously, the roars when I go in, it’s even more rewarding, especially with how long I’ve been playing for the Spirit, and each time I come on, it’s even more exciting,” Rodman said.

In response to a more direct question about her next steps, Rodman said her big decision can wait.

“For me, my focus has been winning this championship, and then the next steps come after that.”

When Spirit head coach Adrián González joined in the celebrations, he was clearly excited but kept reminding the crowd of the biggest prize. He went around holding up his index finger and shouting “one more” at the crowd, with the biggest prize still one week and one game away.

The NWSL Championship game will be played Saturday night in San Jose, California, at PayPal Park, the home of Bay FC. After a dramatic semifinal win over defending champion Orlando Pride, NJ / NY Gotham FC will be squaring off against the Spirit in a rematch of last year’s semifinal.

Considering that last year’s game was the most thrilling sporting event I have ever witnessed, this year’s showdown may end up being appointment viewing.

MS NOW

As it often has been through 2025, it has been a tumultuous stretch of news in the last month or so since the previous edition of this newsletter.

My day job even has a new name, as the network has taken on the new name of MS NOW as part of parent company Versant’s spin-off from NBC Universal. With the separation from NBC, the former MSNBC could no longer keep those three letters or the related peacock logo.

Thankfully, nothing else is changing, It is the new name but the same mission. So like it or not, the time is MS NOW!

Before the name change, which occurred this weekend, I was able to contribute to some great reporting and coverage.

On Election Night, I helped recap some of the lower-profile elections that unfolded alongside the New York City mayoral race and the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia.

For stories not at the top of the news, it’s usually worth finding some sort of value-add, an interesting fact that makes an otherwise under-the-radar story stick with people.

A note I helped craft made its way to the live telecast. As anchor Rachel Maddow read off the details, her colleagues at the desk were surprised at the detail I had found on the Detroit mayoral race, where city council president Mary Sheffield became the first woman elected as mayor in the city’s history. I connected the dots that, as the 76^th mayor of Detroit, Sheffield would, by extension, follow 75 men who held the office before her.

That fact stopped the discussion in its tracks and turned an otherwise mundane reading of election results into a point where even expert news anchors had the ‘aha’ moment of ‘I didn’t fully realize that.’

And that right there is how you turn a small story into something notable.

Something Good

I’ll actually skip the usual end note of offering something good I ate to offer thoughts on a photo I was able to snap and the person in it.

I did not catch the name or age of the man in the photo above, but he was sitting in the field-side lounge at Saturday’s Spirit game.

Based on his look, he was clearly in his 80s or 90s, wearing a hat commemorating a long-side-decommissioned ship (the USS Yorktown CV-10, which served in the Pacific theatre of World War II and in Vietnam before being decommissioned in 1970. It has been a museum for 50 years.) 

I began to imagine this man’s life, particularly the thought of telling this man about where he would be nowadays.

Imagine going back to this man’s youth, presumably in the 1940s or 1950s and telling him where he would be.

That he would make it to the year 2025, with self-driving cars, computers that can self-generate answers to any question, and telephones that you could fit in your pocket and that can access any book, any map, any newspaper, any record, or any piece of video.

That he would be sitting in a sold-out stadium in the United States, joining nearly 20,000 people to watch soccer. And not just soccer, but soccer played by women.

This man may well have been alive and cognizant at a time when only baseball reigned supreme in the American public’s view of sports, at a time when even racially integrating sports was a radical change, before women could even serve full-time in the military, let alone have a consistent path to playing college or professional sports.

It makes me so happy to think about how this man made it to Saturday’s game. I am sure he has had a front-row seat to a lot of history. This weekend, he had the chance to see just a little bit more.

Just a note: Any work here or opinions I express are solely mine, and do not reflect the views of my employer, my coworkers, or anybody else affiliated with me. The newsletter is not monetized in any way and everything in here is written and reported with my own resources on my own time outside of my working hours unless specifically noted otherwise. “I’m Curious” is just for me, the author, and for you, the reader. Thank you for reading. I’m glad you’re here.