U.S. Soccer’s announcement came right before our long weekends, when many of us were already transitioning into our full Thanksgiving rituals, but the news was important all the same. For the second straight camp, Midge Purce has been called into the United States women’s national team, and while the selection the team’s new head coach, Vlatko Andonovski, has brought in is being billed as a “identification” camp, Purce’s place among its 24 names still carried a number of importance inferences.
This will make the fourth time the Portland Thorns FC attacker has been called into a senior camp – the third time since she was selected by Portland in a dispersal draft just under two years ago.