After serving as CONCACAF’s head of women’s soccer from 2018 through 2021, LeBlanc was offered the general manager’s job with the Thorns last year as the club rebuilt from the NWSL abuse scandal. During LeBlanc’s early tenure, the Thorns won the NWSL Challenge Cup, the Women’s International Champions Cup, and the NWSL Shield in 2021 before winning the club’s third NWSL title in 2022.
Also during that time, LeBlanc and her daughter, Paris, had begun walking laps around the field at the Thorns’ home stadium, Providence Park, after games and greeting fans.
“The first time I did that lap with my daughter at a Thorns game, I did that to thank the city for showing up because I want to make sure people understand the importance of them even showing up,” LeBlanc said. “Some of it was my daughter: We moved here from the Bahamas during the pandemic, so she hadn’t been around as many people as most people would have thought, so this is a city that made me feel like I belonged, and I wanted her to feel that way.”
Last year, after RAJ Sports purchased the Thorns and received its WNBA franchise, LeBlanc was named the company’s GM and became even more familiar to sports fans in Portland. When the Portland Fire brand was revived in July, she served as a de facto emcee for thousands of fans outside the Moda Center as they lined up for merchandise, food carts, and team tattoos. At the Women’s Sports Innovation Summit, she hosted both the event and a panel with Olympic track and field legend Carl Lewis, U.S. women’s soccer World Cup winner (and Portland resident) Shannon Boxx, and basketball Hall of Fame inductee Sylvia Fowles—a discussion she recorded for her soon-to-launch Epicenter of Women’s Sports Podcast.
LeBlanc noted that she returned to Portland because it was a city in which she felt she could always be herself, and she accepted the additional responsibilities of a WNBA team because basketball was her first love, where she “saw women who looked like me doing a sport at a high level.” But her partner for those laps around Providence Park is still her main inspiration for being the face of Portland’s women’s sports empire.
“My why is my daughter. This is where I’m raising my daughter, and we always talk every day about ‘go be your own hero,’ but I also know how she looks at me, so every single day I want to be her ‘shero,’” LeBlanc said.
City of dreams
Portland is a city that turns out for women’s sports. During the Fire’s original run from 2000 to 2002, it averaged more than 8,000 fans per game. As recently as 2023, the WNBA’s league average was below 6,660.
Last year, the NWSL hit an all-time average attendance high of 11,250 fans per game. The Thorns exceeded that during LeBlanc’s one year there as a player (13,320 back in 2013) and are averaging more than 17,000 per match this year—including a peak audience of more than 21,000 for Pride Night back in June.
