Megan Rapinoe turned a citizen of the world throughout her soccer profession, however for greater than a decade—Seattle referred to as her one among its personal.
Rapinoe performed faculty soccer simply down I-5 on the College of Portland. In 2012, earlier than profitable both of her two World Cup titles with the U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Group, she joined the Seattle Sounders Girls of the United Soccer League Girls’s League. A yr later, she joined the Seattle Reign within the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League, the place she’s performed for a decade.
When she spoke out towards gender inequity, racial injustice, transphobia and abortion restrictions, she did so with the town of Seattle behind her. When she received two World Cups, an Olympic gold medal, the Ballon d’Or and FIFA’s Golden Ball, Golden Boot and Finest Participant, the town was there for her, too.
When she performed her last residence sport for the OL Reign—presently owned by French membership Olympique Lyonnais, the place Rapinoe performed from 2012-2014 and received a title in 2013—Rapinoe was despatched off by an NWSL-record 34,140 followers and 683,000 regular-season viewers on CBS.
Seattle-based inventive company Copacino Fujikado has labored with the Reign for the final two years and has partnered with Rapinoe—and her spouse and WNBA Seattle Storm legend Sue Chicken—on pandemic-era adverts for Symetra Monetary. Heading into that final residence match, the company teamed with the Reign and its Royal Guard supporters’ group to host a sendoff on the Tough & Tumble girls’s sports activities bar in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.
Copacino Fujikado additionally spent its personal cash on a billboard subsequent to the West Seattle Bridge bidding farewell to Rapinoe because the OL Reign ready for his or her NWSL Championship matchup—and Rapinoe’s last skilled soccer match—towards F.C. Gotham Nov. 11. Whereas neither the Reign nor the company paid for media to advertise both the sendoff occasion or the billboard, greater than 5 million followers worldwide checked into social media protection of their efforts.
Copacino Fujikado has included the Seattle Youngsters’s Hospital, Seattle Aquarium and Seattle Mariners amongst its purchasers. By paying tribute to Rapinoe, nonetheless, its native focus served a broader, world objective.
“We strive simply to be a part of the material of the group and the tradition of the town,” stated Chris Copacino, government director of enterprise improvement at Copacino Fujikado. “We’ve tracked alongside together with her and appreciated her for a very long time, so, to type of faucet into the zeitgeist of what’s happening in our metropolis was one thing that we will put up and simply type of be a part of the cultural pulse.”
