Sports in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon, United States, is home to two major league sports team (the Trail Blazers of the NBA, and the Timbers of MLS). Despite being home to two top-division teams, the city hosts a wide variety of sports and sporting events.

List of Portland teams

Club	Sport	League	League championships	Home venue	Founded
Portland Trail Blazers	Basketball	National Basketball Association	1 (1976-77)	Rose Garden	1970
Portland Timbers	Soccer	Major League Soccer	0	Jeld-Wen Field	2009
Portland Thorns	Women's soccer	National Women's Soccer League	0	Jeld-Wen Field	2012
Portland Winterhawks	Ice hockey	Western Hockey League	2 (1982–83, 1997–98)	Rose Garden	1976

Hockey

Rose Garden Arena, home of the Trail Blazers and Winterhawks.

Portland's first professional sports team was the Portland Rosebuds. They joined the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in 1914. They were the first U.S. team to play for the Stanley Cup (in 1916, against the Montreal Canadiens). The initial team folded soon afterwards in 1918, but the Regina Capitals moved into the city and took the same name in 1925. However, this team folded after just a single season. After this, many of the team's players were traded to Chicago and became the core of the new Blackhawks franchise. The Rosebuds played at the Portland Hippodrome.

The Portland Winterhawks, a major-junior ice hockey team in the Western Hockey League, have been a team since 1976-1977, when the Blazers won the NBA Finals. The Winterhawks are one of the most popular junior ice hockey teams and have many loyal fans in Portland. They have also produced many NHL stars.

Basketball

Several of the Blazers' former players are in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, including Dražen Petrović, Bill Walton, Lenny Wilkens, Clyde "The Glide" Drexler, and Arvydas Sabonis. The Blazers won their only NBA Championship in 1977. They lost in the NBA finals in 1990 (to the Detroit Pistons) and 1992 (to the Chicago Bulls).

One minor league basketball team, the Portland Chinooks in the International Basketball League, has recently been established. The Oregon Riptide, an American Basketball Association team announced in summer 2006, has not materialized.

The city was also home to a WNBA team, the Portland Fire. The team never made the playoffs and folded in 2002.

Baseball and softball

PGE Park (now Jeld-Wen Field), home of the Beavers and the Timbers.

The Portland Beavers were a Triple-A baseball team from the Pacific Coast League affiliated with the San Diego Padres. The most recent franchise, which left after the 2010 season to become the Tucson Padres, was founded in 2001, though the Beavers name dates to an early Portland baseball team established in 1903. With the Beavers no longer playing in Portland, the closest minor league team was the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, located 43 miles away in Keizer until the Hillsboro Hops began play in 2013 at a new 4,500-seat stadium in Hillsboro, a Portland suburb.

Baseball teams called the Beavers existed in Portland from 1903-1917 and again from 1919-1972, and finally from 1978-1993. In 1973, after the Beavers moved to Spokane, Washington, the Portland Mavericks came to town in the form of an independent Single-A team within the Northwest League. From 1973 to 1977 they played in what was then known as Civic Stadium. The Mavericks were owned by ex-minor league player and television actor Bing Russell. When Russell sold the team back to the Beavers in 1978 it was for 116,000 dollars, at the time a record amount for a minor league franchise. The most recent Beavers franchise played in PGE Park. The original Beavers stadium was Vaughn Street Park located in northwest Portland. The Beavers have won the Pacific Coast League Pennant the following years: 1906, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1932, 1936, 1945 and 1983. When the Beavers relocated to Salt Lake City in 1993, another Northwest League team, the Portland Rockies, moved in for the 1995 season, playing until 2000. When the Beavers returned, the Rockies relocated to Pasco, Washington to become the Tri-City Dust Devils.

There has been recent interest in attracting a Major League Baseball franchise to Portland. In 2004, the city made an unsuccessful bid for the Montreal Expos, and in 2006 the city was contacted by the Florida Marlins.

The local Alpenrose Dairy is host to the annual Little League softball World Series and has a velodrome on site.

Soccer

The Portland Timbers of the Major League Soccer started play at Jeld-Wen Field in 2011. The franchise is a continuation of the Portland Timbers, who played in the United Soccer League First Division, who themselves carried the name of a previous Timbers team, before they dissolved in 2010 made the playoffs four out of six times but they never won a championship.

The Timbers also operate Portland Thorns FC, a professional women's team that is one of the eight charter members of the National Women's Soccer League, launching in 2013. The Thorns share Jeld-Wen Field with the Timbers.

College Athletics

Portland is home to two Division 1 programs: the Portland Pilots, of the University of Portland, and the Portland State Vikings, from Portland State University. Portland State offers football, basketball, women's volleyball, golf, soccer, track and field, tennis, softball, and cross country. The Vikings sponsor football in the FCS (formerly Division I-AA) level and play their games at Jeld-Wen Field. Portland State is a member of the Big Sky Conference. The Portland Pilots are members of the non-football West Coast Conference and sponsor baseball, basketball, cross country, soccer, tennis, and track and field.

Other sports teams

• Rugby League- Rose City Rugby League were formed in 2010 and are part of the AMNRL's Western Expansion.

• Lacrosse. Portland had a team (Portland LumberJax) in the National Lacrosse League.

• Rugby union. Portland is home to three senior-level men's rugby union football clubs and two women's clubs that are sanctioned members of USA Rugby. In men's rugby, the Oregon Sports Union (ORSU) Rugby Club (ORSU Jesters)Portland Rugby Football Club (Oregon) [http://www.portlandrugby.org ("Pigs")], and the Eastside Tsunami compete in Division II of the Pacific Northwest Rugby Football Union (PNRFU).[3]. The ORSU Women's Rugby team[4] competes in Women's Division I while the Portland Lady Pigs compete in Women's Division II. The ORSU Women have been ranked in the top ten nationally since 2007.

• Tennis. Team Portland Tennis is a gay and lesbian tennis group that hosts the GLTA sanctioned The Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance Rose City Open every Labor Day weekend and provides various opportunities to meet and compete within the gay community.

• Touch rugby. The Portland Touch Rugby team is a member of the US Federation of International Touch (USFIT)and has won the national championship several times, most recently in 2007 (Portland, Oregon), 2008 (Houston, Texas), and 2009 (Portland, Oregon). The team, the Portland Hunters [5], is home to a number of key members of the US National Touch team who have competed in the Touch Rugby International World Cup several times. There are also two other Touch Rugby teams in the Portland area, the Tigard, Oregon branch of Tumeke Touch and the Reed College Touch Rugby team.

• Australian Rules Football. Portland is home to the Portland Steelheads Australian Football Club of the USAFL, one of the oldest in the United States, having formed in 1998. The club also runs a small metro footy league. Portland holds the record attendance for an Australian Rules Football match (14,787), when visiting Australian Football League clubs Melbourne and West Coast competed at Civic Stadium in 1990.

• Paintball. The Portland Naughty Dogs compete in the National Professional Paintball League in a variety of tournaments around the U.S.

• Roller derby. The Rose City Rollers is an all-female Women's Flat Track Derby Association-affiliated league with over 140 members, founded in 2004. It consists of five teams: the Heartless Heathers, the Break Neck Betties, the High Rollers, the Guns N Rollers, and the All-Star traveling team, the Wheels of Justice, who play in interleague bouts. Portland Men's Roller Derby is an all-male league established in 2009. The men's league plays by the current WFTDA roller derby ruleset.

• Mixed Martial Arts. Portland is also known as a hub for MMA. It's the site of Team Quest, a training camp founded by MMA legends such as Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, and Matt Lindland. Lindland was also founder and coach of the Portland Wolfpack, Portland's team in the now defunct International Fight League. Portland also is host to the semi-annual Sportfight events which frequently showcase the best up and coming fighters in the Pacific Northwest.

Defunct sports teams

• The Portland Breakers competed in the United States Football League during the 1985 USFL season.

• The Portland Storm and Portland Thunder competed in the World Football League in 1974 and 1975.

• The Portland Fire competed in the WNBA from 2000 through 2002.

• The Portland Rosebuds were two early professional hockey teams, one of which in 1916 was the first Stanley Cup finals participant from the United States.

Other venues, events, and activities

A view of downtown with Mt. Hood in the background.

• Auto racing. Portland was on the Champ Car World Series circuit, hosting the Grand Prix of Portland race at the Portland International Raceway from 1984-2007. PIR also hosts a race on the American Le Mans Series and a variety of SCCA, historic, and annual races such as the Rose Cup during the city's Rose Festival.

• Skiing and snowboarding are particularly popular with Portlanders. The area is served by a number of resorts located on nearby Mount Hood, including Timberline, which allows skiing year round. The only other resort in North America with summer skiing is Whistler in British Columbia.

• Rock climbing is growing in popularity as an outdoor pastime. At numerous small crags around town, one may glimpse mountaineers-in-training with their ropes, alpenstocks, and hard-soled boots practicing their technical moves on the rock in preparation for difficult alpine ascents.

• Running is a major important sport in the metropolitan area, the home of Nike and of Adidas' American operations. The Portland Marathon has been held annually in the city since 1971. The Hood to Coast Relay is the world's largest running relay race, with approximately 17,000 racers per year running from Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood to the Pacific Ocean at Seaside.

• Horse Racing. Horses have run at Portland Meadows since 1946.

• Velodrome. Amateur cycling weekly at the Alpenrose Velodrome since 1962.

• Cricket. Portland has its own cricket league called Oregon Cricket League (OCL) estb. 2005 that provides 2 formats of the game of cricket year around.