This week, She’s Soccer Too spotlights Nicky Cottee, one of my favourite Winnipeg soccer voices to follow, and the President of Red River Rising, the official supporters group of Valour FC!

Hi Nicky! Tell everyone reading a brief history of you.

I fell in love with soccer when I started playing at 7 years old, but I remained oblivious to supporter culture until I was in my 30’s. I grew up in the 80’s when soccer was not as prevalent on TV, and no one in my family supported a Euro Team. I’m almost embarrassed to say I had no awareness of our National teams.

That changed in 2010 when I caught a news story about our Women’s National Team preparing for the 2011 World Cup. I started following the team and in 2013 when the “Rematch” between Canada and the USA was scheduled for BMO field, I discovered the Voyageurs website and was intrigued. I didn’t buy tickets in the supporter’s section because I felt intimidated, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. So, I attended that game sitting on the sidelines, but I was so impressed with atmosphere the Voyageurs brought to the stadium.

2013 was also the year that the NWSL launched. With no Canadian team in the league, The Portland Thorns became my team. My all-time favourite Canadian player, Karina LeBlanc, was their keeper, and some other Canadian named Christine Sinclair was the captain. When they made the Championship game in Rochester, I bought tickets to stand with the Rose City Riveters and that game was a revelation for me. The Riveters were so welcoming even though I was a stranger. I stood and sang and felt part of something bigger. We were a group of maybe 20 and we drowned out a stadium that was packed with Western New York Flash fans.

I came home from that game committed to jumping fully into the Voyageurs community. And of course, the Voyageurs welcomed me in. My only regret was that I waited so long!

What is your earliest sports memory?

My earliest sports memory is of watching from the sidelines, as my mom and aunts kicked ass in several women’s rec leagues. One of the sports they played was grid iron football, and in retrospect, it probably wasn’t overly ‘normal’ in the early 80’s for grown women to be playing contact sports, and if it felt kind of badass to 6-year-old me. I’m thankful to have had those kind of role models.

How did you first become involved in Red River Rising, and what was it’s major draw for you?

Back in 2016, I saw Adam Johnston tweet out that he was starting a supporter group in Winnipeg. I didn’t know Adam, or really anyone else, because I had just moved here, but I had to be involved. All we knew at that point was that there was going to be a new league in Canada, and that Hamilton was going to have a team.

I think we all thought we might be in for a bit of a fight to bring a team here, and I’m always up for a good fight, so I was all in.

What had been your biggest goals and aspirations for not only Red River Rising, but also yourself in your Presidential role, the first year of the Canadian Premier League?

We had relatively humble goals as a group, because we didn’t know what to expect. It had been a long time since Winnipeg had had a professional soccer team. Heading into season one, we wanted to have some fun, and to get people singing together, and by the end of the season, have a few songs that we could pull off as a group. It almost feels silly now, to have set the bar so low, because what we pulled off in that first game, was beyond what I imagined was possible, even by the end of the season.

On a personal level, I wanted to make sure that everyone felt welcome in our section, and I really wanted to encourage different flavours of support. Omar Kinarath came up with the idea to call our section The Trench, and I loved it right away. Within The Trench, we have a microcosm of the greater Winnipeg community, which is rich with so many different cultures, and we are all united in our support for Valour. We’d really like to bring in even more of that culture into our support this year.

What were some of the biggest challenges that came with running the group? How did you tackle them, and what do you hope to improve upon in the sophomore year?

I’d say the biggest challenge running the group is that I do most of the ‘managing’ remotely. In my professional life, the people I work with are all in the same office. It’s been a new challenge for me coordinating most things remotely.

I also have a bad habit of doing everything myself, and as a board, I think the four of us have probably done that a bit too much. This year, we want to make use of more helping hands and ideas within our committees.

What has been one of your favourite moments with RRR, or among Valour FC as a whole?

My favourite moment was travelling to Victoria to watch Valour’s first ever game in person. It was incredible being there to see the first goal scored, and I will never forget the moment after Dylan Carreiro scored the game winner, and the team ran to our away section to celebrate with us.

What are you most looking forward to this 2020 season?

I’m looking forward to singing with everyone again in the stands. It’s crazy how much I missed it. And I’m also looking forward to growing our section, and our support. I can’t wait until we have spread into multiple sections, hopping, and singing for the full 90.

In the spirit of yesterday’s International Women’s Day, collectively, what do you believe we as media, yourselves as SG representatives and the league overall can do to appeal to, appreciate or actively include women?

That’s a tough and important question. I think having visible females within the leadership of Supporters groups helps make it more welcoming, and we do have a high percentage of women in Red River Rising. But it’s funny. As much as I like to think we are making headway, I sometimes feel a little like I’m hitting a brick wall. There are some people that assume that because I’m a woman, I’m not a hard-core supporter. That I’m here to police language or be the mom of the group. It makes my husband chuckle a little, because he knows which one of us accidentally taught our daughter the F word. I don’t really know what the answer is to change that, but I’m going to keep working on it.

From a media perspective, stories like this help. But it would also be great to see women featured in stories that weren’t about us being women. More stories that feature women as supporters just like everyone else, would go a long way.

And from the league, I’d love to see more women in leadership roles. If more women who are passionate about football were part of the decision making, perhaps they might understand the importance of things like selling women authentic kits. When leagues only offer women replica kits that don’t even look like the kits the players wear, it’s hard not to feel like we are secondary supporters. It might seem like a little thing to some, but those little things add up.



Part of your online story included a ‘best experiences’ excerpt involving “a warp speed ride through Mexico City on a riot bus.” We gotta know this story.

In 2016, I joined the Voyageurs trip to Mexico City to watch Men’s World Cup qualifier at the Azteca. The Canadian Ambassador to Mexico, and his staff, joined us as we watched Canada lose to Mexico. Even though we were directed to stay in the stadium for 30 minutes after the game, we were accidentally ushered out of the stadium with the Ambassador and his staff. We found ourselves in the parking lot, surrounded by Mexican fans who were angry that they hadn’t beat us by more, with no bus in sight. So the Ambassador directed us to get on a couple of riot busses that sped us through the streets of Mexico City, back to our hotel. With sirens blaring, we had police in riot gear guarding the doors, while we sat behind wired windows, singing songs the entire way back. It was exhilarating as the busses sped through the city. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to top that for an away trip.

Learn more about Red River Rising on their website, or follow along on Twitter!

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Casey Wolfgang Copywriter, photographer, bookworm and consumer of far too much pasta; Casey is a nursing school dropout turned marketing grad with current/previous roles and learning experiences including, but not limited to, motorcycle marketing and events with Harley-Davidson, sports entertainment with the Ontario Hockey League, merching/publicity/photographic projects in the Canadian music industry and agency-level copywriting for major local, national and international brands. Catch her at a local football match, camera in hand, or most often on Twitter.

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