Copyright The Oregonian
Hello world, I’m your wild girl. I’m your ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb. Portland’s newest semi-pro team is going to paint the town red — cherry red. COLLiDE Sport — the same folks behind Portland Pickles baseball and Portland Bangers FC — announced Tuesday that the city’s new USL women’s soccer team would be the Cherry Bombs F.C. “We built the Cherry Bombs to embody everything that makes Portland electric: fearless creativity, unapologetic individuality, and the belief that sports can be a canvas for culture,” said Alan Miller, president of COLLiDE, in a statement on the announcement. “This team isn’t just joining the W League, it’s detonating a new era for women’s soccer in the Northwest.” The Cherry Bombs name pays homage to The Runaways’ 1976 punk rock song, “Cherry Bomb” and the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s. The women-led music scene had a strong Pacific Northwest connection with bands like Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy. COLLiDE also announced that former Seahawks punter Jon Ryan is the team’s owner. The team unveiled a red and pink cherry logo with a fuse for a stem. Mary T. Cherry will be the club’s mascot, but fans will need to wait until next year for the reveal of the in-the-plush live version of the character. (Presumably, like Dillon T. Pickle and Saucy T. Sausage, the “T” stands for “The.”) The team celebrated with a launch party at the Lloyd Center mall on Tuesday evening, featuring music from local woman-fronted punk/rock bands The Shitfits, Dustbunny, Fox Medicine and Shaylee. The Cherry Bombs will play in the USL W League, a pre-professional league that describes itself as “enhancing the women’s soccer pipeline between college and professional soccer.”
