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Jessie Fleming doesn’t mind a little rain.
In fact, she’s found that despite the Pacific Northwest’s reputation, seasonal affective disorder is the least of her worries since she joined the Portland Thorns last year. “Coming from England, I was used to a lot of rain and gray skies,” Fleming says. “I don’t mind the weather here at all.”
Finding her footing on the Thorns has been a different story.
You couldn’t tell in Portland’s 1-0 win over the Utah Royals last Friday. Fleming came in as a second-half sub, tasked with breaking up Utah’s momentum and preserving the Thorns’ lead. It wasn’t the flashiest performance, but Fleming (in the totally in-context words of Chappell Roan) got the job done—covering space and combining with her teammates on the left side of the field. I’m not sure she stopped running for more than a 15-second span in her time on the pitch.
As Portland’s marquee signing ahead of the 2024 season, expectations around Fleming have been high, to say the least. The Thorns brought her in from Chelsea FC, where she trained alongside some of the best footballers in the world on a dominant English soccer side, for an NWSL-record transfer fee.
The two-time Olympic medalist had already spent more than a decade with Canada’s senior national team and had been named Canada soccer’s player of the year three times in a row. Shortly before Portland’s season kicked off, she was named captain of the Canadian national team, taking over the title from all-time international leading goal scorer and Portland Thorn Christine Sinclair. (While we’re here, I might as well highlight that Fleming has a degree in materials engineering from UCLA.) That’s quite the list of accomplishments for someone who turned 26 just days before her Thorns debut.
So, yeah, Fleming signing with Portland was kind of a big deal. And it certainly didn’t hurt that she joined a midfield of Sam Coffey and Hina Sugita—both established world-class players in their own right—and played alongside Sinclair and youth phenom Olivia Moultrie.
But working alongside star talent doesn’t guarantee anyone immediate success.
It’s not that Fleming joined the Thorns and started playing horrible soccer; she was still, in Coffey’s words, the “little Energizer bunny that never stops working.” Her defensive statistics, especially, were in good standing among midfielders in the league. But among fans I talked to last year—and as Fleming herself alluded to in interviews—there was also a sense that she wasn’t quite playing at the level we know she can reach.
“To be perfectly honest, I’m my own worst enemy,” Fleming says. “I have struggled in my career, a little bit, managing external expectations and going away from just enjoying playing.”
Sometimes, good things take time. Toward the end of the year, it looked like Fleming was starting to settle in with the team more on the pitch.
And when she took the field for the first time in 2025, something clicked. The Thorns took a good 45 minutes to settle into their season opener against the Kansas City Current, but come the second half, Fleming was everywhere. In the 20 minutes of the second half before Thorns head coach Rob Gale subbed her out, she was active on the ball, dictating play from a less-natural winger position, no less.
Maybe it was the offseason under her belt or feeling more settled in Portland and with her club. She’s part of a group of Thorns who do Pilates together and has found she loves browsing the local produce at the Portland State University Farmers Market. Finding those connections to her teammates and city can’t hurt, right?
Or maybe we can attribute it to the way Fleming has refocused on her love of the game this season. She’s approaching this year with joy and mental diligence and not letting herself get caught up in an accidental giveaway or a poor game.
She also puts in the work.
“She does everything right,” Gale said in response to my question at a recent press conference. “Her and Hina come out about 20 minutes before practice and get 10,000 touches between them and do their own little dance and technical warmup.”
Fleming’s resurgence couldn’t have come at a better time for Portland. This year’s squad is awash with young talent, but they’ll need veteran players to look to for guidance. At the wise old age of 27, Fleming is poised to take up the mantle.
“I’m not really a big ‘rah-rah’ person,” she says. “I’m not going to talk in front of the group, but if the younger players are interested to learn, I’m happy to help.”
Though the team seems energized and enthusiastic to start the year, the nine-month campaign is sure to come with hiccups—especially as newer players adjust to the league. But Fleming has ridden out the storm before and come out better on the other side. She’s been part of a Canadian squad that has crashed out of World Cup tournaments in a disappointing fashion only to come back and win an Olympic medal—twice. That takes something special.
“The human side is important,” Fleming says. “Making sure that we’re checking in on each other as players is a massive piece of it.”
The other part is staying focused on why she enjoys the game. “I take what I do really seriously,” she says, “but it’s also not that serious. It’s that fine line: When you play, it is like life or death, but then you step off the pitch, remembering that what we do isn’t that significant in the grand scheme of the world.”
It’s true that Fleming playing some good games of soccer for the Thorns isn’t going to change the world. But maybe her tenacity and skill on the ball can bring those of us watching a little joy, something to cheer for.
And maybe she can make her mark on this next generation of Thorns soccer along the way.
NEXT MATCHES
@ Seattle Reign
7 pm Friday, April 18
Streams on Amazon Prime
vs. NJ/NY Gotham FC
7:30 pm Tuesday, April 22
Providence Park