Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

This is a deeply meaningful edition to me, as it includes my first time ever covering a soccer game in my home state of New Jersey, and some reflections on home, growing up and getting older.

As always, feel free to either read through or flip around as you see fit!

Here’s the Table of Contents.

Table of Contents

• Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

  • The Most Curious Thing This Week: Let's Hear It for New York.../New Jersey Gotham FC

  • The Photo Bay

    • Mandy Freeman: Letting the Good Times Roll

    • Sarah Schupansky and Sofia Cook: The New Statler and Waldorf?

    • Crash!: Izzy Rodriguez vs. Jordynn Dudley

    • Midge Purce: Defender?

    • Ann-Katrin Berger: The Time Lord

    • Haley Hopkins: Right in the Thick of It

    • Tierna Davidson: The Captain

  • Other Things of Note: Things Change

  • Something Good I Ate: An Outback Classic

And because of the walk down memory lane that this weekend entailed, Peach is making space for one of her forebears to come first.

Here’s Hank!

And here’s Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s the hottest team in the NWSL, the winners of four straight, top of the table and annoying the hell out of everybody else who isn’t a fan of theirs: Gotham FC, aka The Bats.

The big team from The Big Apple (and the Garden State) bounced back from allowing one of the fastest goals in NWSL history to bring the game under control, snag two goals before halftime and generally stifle the talented but struggling and depleted Kansas City Current in a 2-1 win on Friday night.

A brilliant through ball from Kansas City’s attacking midfielder Croix Bethune found rookie winger Amelia White, who caught Gotham goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger off-guard for a near-instant 1-0 lead for the visitors. Bethune notched her ninth assist of the season, which is tied for most in the league. As noted fictional Kansas City native soccer coach Ted Lasso might put it: “Barbecue sauce.”

Kansas City’s actual coach Chris Armas, fittingly enough a native of Long Island and not Kansas City, said it was the culmination of an effort to address the Current’s road struggles: the team is undefeated at home but has only won two games on the road this season.

“We did step on the pitch with good mentality, a good road mentality. We’ve been starting games well and tonight, we get rewarded with a really good start to the game,” Armas said postgame.

But from there, the Bats shook off the shocker and jumped right into playing their usual game. There was a lot of possession, a lot of high pressing, and not a lot of success for a Current attack that was more or less smushed as Gotham’s defense kept them out of the 18-yard box. Kansas City only managed one more shot in the first half after their near-instant goal.

“I think that gave us a little bit of a punch in the face and we woke up and we responded really well. I’m proud of the team for that. I’m proud of the team for sticking to the game plan that we wanted to execute,” Gotham defender and team captain Tierna Davidson told reporters after the game.

As far as what that game plan looked like?

“I think, doing our best to force them into spaces that they didn't prefer,” Davidson told me. “We know that they like to transition centrally, and they're very dangerous when they get into those positions running at the back line. Trying to make sure that if we're going to give up something, it's wide space. But also, too, transitionally being really turned on to what they want to do and trying to shut it down before it happens.”

And Kansas City saw the consequences of Gotham sticking to a plan to drive them out of the spaces they like on the stat sheet. The club managed only four more shots and only one opportunity that registered as a big chance in the 89 minutes after their first-minute goal.

In some of his early efforts to dissect the loss, Armas noticed some of the struggles his team had with responding to Gotham’s game plan.

“They’re a team in the league that dominates field position for different reasons. They can press well. They can press with numbers. They have smart players and our build-up habits have to be better than the pressing habits,” Armas said.

It did not take Gotham terribly long to find an equalizer. In the 13th minute, a free kick from Jaedyn Shaw sailed into the box, ping-ponging to the foot of forward-turned-defender Midge Purce, who snuck it through a crowd of players and past Current goalkeeper Marisa Jordan to bring things back level.

Things got a bit nervy in the later part of the first half, as a rough play from Kansas City defender Elizabeth Ball led to the referee issuing her a red card. The decision prompted plenty of outcry from Current players and ultimately, the video assistant referee called the official over for a lengthy VAR check. The final decision led to Ball staying in the game, with her red downgraded to a yellow. Gotham fans definitely let the referee have it.

While the referee did not issue any other cards over the course of the game, there were a few different pushes or physical battles that led to some scuffling after a few hard fouls.

“It definitely can get chippy out there, in both teams kind of putting their best foot forward,” White told the press after the game. “And I think today there was definitely some tough challenges in there and some tough tackles.”

As Gotham continued to assert control over possession and the game, there was another major opportunity for Jaedyn Shaw to contribute. Shaw did not receive credit for the assist on the first goal since the ball hit off a couple of players before finding Purce. But that was not an issue when Shaw got the ball on the left edge of the 18-yard box, left Ball behind with some impressive footwork, and hit a frozen rope of a ball over the middle to striker Sam Kerr, who put it in the net.

“It’s always great to have a world-class player on your team. I think it’s been really fun to just build chemistry with her, and I feel like she’s just always in the right spot, so I don’t even have to look most times,” Shaw said postgame with a big smile.

Kerr is one of the best strikers and goal scorers in the history of women’s soccer, with over 200 career professional goals across leagues in the U.S., her native Australia, and most recently before rejoining Gotham last month, a six-year stint in England at Chelsea.

“First and foremost, you see a player like Sam Kerr on the opposition team sheet and that sends a message psychologically,” Gotham acting head coach Shaun Harris said. “She's a dangerous player. She's a dangerous threat, so you know you can't give her an inch or she's going to do what she's known for.”

Out of the halftime break, Kansas City emerged on the front foot, with two shots in the first ten minutes, including a point-blank opportunity for Amelia White to find her second. White got within a few feet of tying the game with Berger several feet away, but Gotham wingback Guro Reiten got in the way and deflected it away from danger.

The Bats nearly put the game out of reach with a third goal a few minutes later, with an absolute banger of a shot from midfielder Jaelin Howell that came from outside the 18-yard box. But after another VAR check, referees found an offside violation when Kerr had tried to drift back to receive the ball before passing it to Howell for the shot.

As time ticked down, it was Gotham who had the upper hand, as they registered four shots from the 88th minute onward and prevented the Current from putting up a shot in the hopes of a stoppage time equalizer.

With the second-place Washington Spirit only managing a draw in their match Sunday evening in Los Angeles against Angel City, Gotham now hold a six-point lead in the race toward the NWSL Shield and the number-one seed in the playoffs.

Kansas City, meanwhile, sit in 7th, but on the short end of the goal-differential tiebreaker with the 6th-place North Carolina Courage. And the Current have an opportunity, as three of their next four games will be at home and the team’s star attacker Temwa Chawinga will be returning from the recently-concluded Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, or WAFCON, where she and her sister Tabitha lifted the 153rd-ranked Malawi national team to an unexpected qualification for the World Cup before Malawi lost in the WAFCON finals to Cameroon.

The Photo Bay

Mandy Freeman: Letting the Good Times Roll

Gotham fullback Mandy Freeman played just a few minutes after coming on as a late substitution in Friday’s match, but the 31-year-old has been an anchor for the club, playing her entire career at Gotham since joining the club as a rookie in 2017 back when it was known as Sky Blue FC.

In the NWSL, playing in the league for that long makes you a real veteran and playing that long for one team is basically an eternity.

Freeman has been there since the team was the league’s doormat and struggled to provide basic resources to players. Now, she’s on a team that has won two of the last three championships, is first in the standings and can pride itself on its world-class resources.

Her teammate Taryn Torres said something here that made her crack up but Freeman has every reason to be overjoyed.

Sarah Schupansky and Sofia Cook: The New Statler and Waldorf?

Starting the game on the bench can leave players with a lot of time to sit back and watch the show.

Both Sarah Schupansky and Sofia Cook are in their second years in the league and with Gotham and have seen their playing time vary while showing plenty of promise on the field.

But here, they seemed to be settling into a bit of a peanut gallery role, looking like a younger, female version of Statler and Waldorf, the duo of often-grumpy old men from The Muppet Show who usually would offer their takes on the show from the balcony up above the stage.

If we don’t get to Schupansky and Cook them play, at least mic them up!

Crash!: Izzy Rodriguez vs. Jordynn Dudley

Soccer is a game with 22 people running around, often as fast as they can, on a field that can sometimes feel big but also sometimes feel remarkably small.

Early in this match, Kansas City’s Izzy Rodriguez and Gotham’s Jordynn Dudley learned how small the field can be the hard way.

The two crashed into each other as Rodriguez tried to stop Dudley from helping a Gotham attack.

And in a reminder of how cruel the soccer gods can be, neither of them ended up with the ball despite both of them getting a foot on it.

Midge Purce: Defender?

While Midge Purce has spent most of her nearly a decade in the NWSL as an attacking player, Gotham has a ton of attackers and not a ton of healthy defenders.

So at times this season, the Harvard alum has moved back on the field from her common role as a winger to more of an attacking-minded fullback.

The change has definitely not stifled her contributions on the attacking end, as her goal Friday marked her second in four games since the team has moved her further back.

But Purce is proving to be up to the challenge on the defensive end, as she showed in a sequence Friday night where she stopped an attack by Debinha, the most prolific goal-scorer in NWSL history across all of the league’s competitions, and turned it into an opportunity to push the ball forward.

Ann-Katrin Berger: The Time Lord

NBA player Robert Williams III has one of the best nicknames in sports. After sleeping in and missing a flight, he earned the nickname "The Time Lord,” but it became apt because of his defensive skill and particularly his timing.

It’s also a callback to the long-running British sci-fi TV show Doctor Who, whose main character is part of a race known as the Time Lords, who have the ability to move through both space and time.

Gotham goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger has earned plenty of derision from fans of other teams through the years for her ability to manage time. When Gotham has a lead, she is very good at stretching out the time it takes for her to give up the ball after a save or ahead of a goal kick.

Berger also will take full advantage of an ability to secure a brief stoppage for injuries, often going down with a cramp or minor injury at a time where it might shift the momentum of the game.

By and large, nothing she does is illegal, and while time-wasting can earn a yellow card, the 35-year-old has played long enough to know exactly how long she can go.

It was noticeable late in the first half when Kansas City had pushed the ball into the final third more than they had before and Berger stopped after getting the ball to check an issue with her foot, take off her shoe and put it back on.

Haley Hopkins: Right in the Thick of It

Whenever a physical moment unfolded in Friday’s game, it felt like Kansas City Current forward Haley Hopkins was right in the middle of it.

When the two teams squared off in a scuffle after the play that led to KC’s Elizabeth Ball earning a card, Hopkins was in the middle and reacted in an animated way to the original decision to issue Ball a red card.

Also in the first half, Hopkins was on the receiving end of a check from Gotham defender Jess Carter. The clash did not lead to a whistle but likely gave Hopkins some soreness the next day.

Tierna Davidson: The Captain

Gotham defender Tierna Davidson has put up one of the best seasons of any center back in the league this season, helping anchor a defense that has allowed the fewest goals of any in the NWSL so far in 2026.

Between her cerebral and thoughtful approach both on and off the pitch, some aspects of her background, her history of advocacy, and most recently, her haircut, Davidson is the only NWSL player I have seen who makes my mind jump to my year-plus of working as a producer for Rachel Maddow at MS NOW. After all, both are from the Bay Area, went to Stanford and openly and happily out lesbians.

Davidson is carrying many a leadership mantle this season. She is a captain for the club and consistently wears the captain’s armband on the field. And this week, she was wearing an additional armband signifying that she is Gotham’s nominee for the Lauren Holiday Impact Award. Davidson has worked with the nonprofit Girls Leadership as well as through the FIFA Impact Programme to build a program centered around addressing ACL tears called the Power Lab. The program is working to build resources that make injury prevention knowledge more accessible to players and help them build confidence and leadership skills.

The New York area has had no shortage of athletes who have assumed and embodied the role of The Captain. The Yankees have had Thurman Munson, Derek Jeter and now Aaron Judge. The Rangers had Mark Messier as their captain during their run to the 1994 Stanley Cup, while the Knicks have had Jalen Brunson in recent years, including during their run to this year’s NBA championship. When future Basketball Hall of Famer and current Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon played for the Liberty, she served as the team’s captain.

Between serving as captain off the field through her own ACL injury last season and her current role on the field as both captain and Lauren Holiday Impact Award nominee, Davidson is proving herself to be a worthy successor in the Big Apple’s rich line of team captains.

I mean, seriously, who can look heroic while drinking from a plastic water bottle?

Other Things of Note: Things Change

This weekend included a visit and stay at my parents’ house on the Jersey Shore. Trips home carry a lot of memories. Many of my childhood friends are there too and every time I go back, I think about how far I’ve come and how different things are. I think of the world as it was when I left and the promise it entailed.

Obviously, the world still has a ton of promise but it’s hard to feel that way when things are a lot worse than when you left. The world can get worse and it can throw bad news your way. Maybe you’re like me and you’re coming home for the first time in your adult life without a job and the security of knowing your source for making ends meet.

This weekend, I sat at home feeling like a failure. Everyone I grew up with—my peers, my parents, even my teachers—they are all struggling with everything from money to health to getting their life together. It weighed on me. Especially as a young overachiever and someone tremendously lucky in life to have relentlessly supportive parents, I felt I could, can, and worst of all, needed to make things better than they are. I saw the promise of the world and felt it was my own promise and that I promised to return with a better world. But it just… hasn’t come yet.

Sitting at home this weekend as my parents prepared the last big check of all of the dusty old stuff in the house to see what to take and what was truly junk before they finally sell the place, I sat in awe at how much things have changed.

I looked through everything from pictures to birthday cards to photographs chronicling not just my entire life but the lives of my family members.

There are the ways things got harder. I could spend all day watching TV, playing with friends, and hanging with a family who was all alive, well and lived nearby.

Now, there are demands on our lives: as adults, we have to provide for ourselves and our families. Friends are busy and family members move. They get sick. They die.

But at the same time, there were the reminders of how life got easier and better. I saw baby pictures and my own birth records. I looked through reports from teachers in kindergarten and first grade detailing my anxiety and my inability to understand others. I saw the school journal entry from the day after 9/11 where my first grade self pretended to be happy. I saw the notes my mom took on the actions of my abusive father and the furiously written diary entries detailing the heartbreak from one crush after another who wasn’t interested.

As miserable as the world can seem, so much of it does get better. I learned how to talk to people and make friends. I have successfully cut my birth father from my life. I navigated trauma to find moments of joy. I found love.

My mom found love, too. And now my parents, my mom and the man who for all intents and purposes is the realest father I have, have seen the joy that I have found in so much of life.

They have seen all of the hundreds of thousands of words I have written here about soccer and were curious enough that they came to Friday’s game.

They sat a few rows up along the sidelines taking in something that, while similar to the many ballgames they have sat through before, was different. There were new rules to learn, texts asking about everything from whether Ann-Katrin Berger took her shoe off (she did), to messages about how much my stepdad loved watching Jordynn Dudley play because of all the contact she took (she did take a lot), to whether former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber was on the sidelines pregame (he was, and did the pregame torch lighting.)

A slightly unsettling thing about being an adult child living separately from your parents is that you think you still know exactly who they are after all the years you lived together. And you think you know all the ways they may have changed. But you can never read them perfectly.

Maybe you take mom to get some fancy sushi in San Diego. You’re sure she’ll love it! After all, she is the one who introduced you to it. Then you get there and… she’s kind of put off by a lot of the dishes. Now you are the one prodding her to give the bit of raw seafood on the plate a chance.

Or in this case, maybe you think, they’re both around 60, they both have health issues… they would never want to deal with the noise and standing required to join the supporters section.

20 minutes into the game, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from my mom, asking excitedly about “the party” with all the songs and the drumming and whether they can join.

In the dying minutes of the second half, I get a picture… from inside Cloud 9, the Gotham supporters section. I turn around, spot them and snap some pictures where they are, I kid you not, fully joining in with the chants.

To think, they hung around long after the final whistle making new friends.

If they come back, I’m certain it’ll be in there.

Whether it’s over the course of many years or 90 minutes, things change.

Something Good I Ate

When I was a kid, one chain restaurant was the be-all and end-all for dinner: Outback Steakhouse.

Outback played just about every role. It was everything from the special treat to the easy choice on nights where cooking wasn’t an option. I have been there to celebrate family occasions, big days, even being rejected from several colleges on decision day in high school.

It’s where I broadened my palate and began to eat everything from beef and steak to salads. In the dead of COVID, when I spent weeks eating only what I could make at home, when I had the chance to order one meal, it was from Outback.

I haven’t eaten there as much in recent years. The quality seemed to get worse and it wasn’t worth the price they were paying. Cost cuts and general “enshittification” had seemingly ruined Outback.

On the way home last night, I realized that there may not be all that many more trips back, especially if my parents do move.

I had a tough day dealing with some of the feelings I laid out above, and although it wasn’t the usual location, I swung by an Outback on the way home.

Everything hit exactly how I needed it to. The bread was warm and soft. The steak was well-seasoned and cooked exactly how I like it (medium, but a bit closer to medium-rare than medium-well.) The sweet potato went perfectly with the delightfully sweet butter, brown sugar and cinnamon combo.

The salad went missing because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cannot and will not protect our public health and actually ensure the U.S. government puts in the necessary work to guarantee that lettuce is safe to eat.

But of course, the marquee part of the meal, the pièce de résistance, served on a special elevated plate that literally says “on another level” along the edge, was the Bloomin’ Onion.

It would not be a real trip to Outback without the roided-out, calorific, delicious, deep-fried disaster of a dish. Absolute abomination or not, the thing was, is, and hopefully always will be delicious.

On a rough day with an emotional roller-coaster of a weekend seeing my entire life laid out in front of me, both I, and my arteries, needed the hug.