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At 29 years old, with her 11-month-old daughter Ruby in tow, Bella Bixby is trying to find common ground with her zoomer teammates on the Portland Thorns. She’s no longer among a squad of people who, like her, regularly use the word “bro.”
“They’re really cute, though,” she says. “They do TikTok dances, and I’m just sitting in the corner like, ‘That’s cool. I’m on TikTok.’”
Bixby’s latest TikTok is a video compilation of clips of her daughter’s first 10 months with Radiohead’s “Creep” playing over it. Ruby is a very cute baby.
The Portland Thorns have grown accustomed to losing players to maternity leave, with striker Sophia Wilson and midfielder Olivia Wade-Katoa both out for the year. But the trend started last year with their goalkeeper Bixby.
It’s been a year and a half since Bixby last took the field in an NWSL game at Providence Park. She made her return to play in April, helping Portland to a 1–0 victory over the Utah Royals. But her only matches this year have been on the road.
Bixby has had her fair share of injuries throughout her eight years as a professional athlete: concussions, knocks to her upper extremities, even an ACL tear. But working her way back into form after pregnancy—and adjusting to the way the women’s game has changed during her leave—has been a whole different beast.
“With injuries, you have a day one where you’re injured,” she says, “and then you get to start seeing progress pretty soon after that.” From day one of pregnancy, the activity you can do decreases. And then there’s about two months after giving birth before you can start the clock on returning to the pitch.
“Mentally, I felt very focused, and I was ready to compete again,” Bixby says. “But the physical side comes back on its own terms, and you can’t really push it too much.”
I’m excited to see more from Portland’s 6-foot goal-scoring goalkeeper, a Milwaukie native whose skill speaks for itself on the field and who doesn’t hesitate to advocate for the league off the pitch.
It’s hard to forget the way we’ve seen Bixby grow throughout her time with the Thorns. The first time I saw her at Providence Park, she was the goalkeeper for Oregon State University, whom Denmark national team striker Nadia Nadim scored a hat trick against in a 2016 preseason match. (Bixby remembers this night, too—though perhaps with less excitement.) But the Thorns’ then-keeper coach Nadine Angerer saw something and pressured the Thorns to draft Bixby.
At the time, Bixby was burnt out, coming off a concussion and doubtful of her future in the sport. “She really initiated not just my love of the game,” Bixby says of working with Angerer, “but that passion for the little details of the game and how to develop even in your mid-20s.”
That detail-oriented approach is evident in the player Bixby is today. “She’s really methodical with what she does,” Thorns goalkeeper coach Jordan Felgate says. “She is really, really driven: knows exactly what she wants to work on, what she needs to work on, as well.”
But by 2020, Bixby had started a master’s program in fisheries and wildlife administration at Oregon State. “I didn’t think my career was going to last that much longer,” she says. “I was fighting to just get on the bench at that time.”
Even as she hedged her bets, Bixby earned the starting job in 2021. She held it until she got pregnant.
The game—and Portland’s identity—has changed since then; I’ve written repeatedly about the youth of this year’s Thorns roster, but the coaching staff overhaul of the past couple of years has also introduced new tactical touchstones as Portland tries to establish its new style of soccer.
One of these is in the way the club now uses its goalkeepers: There’s more to it now than simply stopping the ball from going in the back of the net. As Felgate puts it, today’s keepers are expected “to be like an outfielder in terms of your possession, and you have to be the last line of defense and be as effective as you can in stopping the ball from going in the goal.”
It’s not something Bixby can’t do, Felgate emphasizes, but it’s something that wasn’t really asked of her before. And now she has the chance: Mackenzie Arnold, who looked to be Portland’s No. 1 choice in goal earlier this season and is known exactly for the building distribution the Thorns are looking for, was injured in May.
Bixby brings experience to a young Thorns roster. But Bixby is sensitive to the fact that Ruby takes up a lot of her time, and she hasn’t been able to focus on developing strong mentor-mentee relationships with any of the Thorns’ younger players.
Instead, she wants to lead by example. She is, after all, incredibly proud to represent her home team.
“I really feel like I embody the hashtag for our club,” she says. That, of course, is #RCTID, which stands for “Rose City ’Til I Die.” “I really feel that in my heart.”
Bixby has put her master’s degree on hold for the time being to focus on motherhood and her soccer career. Maybe she’ll circle back to it in a couple of years—or maybe she’ll get licensed as a professional goalkeeper coach, a dream she hopes will become feasible for her as the women’s game continues to grow in the United States.
But for now, Bixby is focused on playing for Portland: in front of her family and at Providence Park.
“Some of the younger players on my team are probably like, ‘OK, chill,’” she says. “But I get goose bumps thinking about a home game at Providence Park. I hope I get the chance to play at Providence Park again.”
NEXT MATCH
vs. Washington Spirit
1 pm Sunday, June 15
Providence Park