Loving Seattle is all about enjoying the little things the city has to offer: the beautiful landscape and the opportunities it presents, the comradery of the middle class culture, the unexpected weeknights that light up with karaoke, and also… soccer. After a summer of putting it off, I finally made it to my first Sounders game.

The Seattle Sounders are the most sold-out soccer team in the United States. They play their games in CenturyLink field, the same field as the Seahawks football team. If you’re not a sports fan, you may not know that CenturyLink is designed in such a way that its acoustics are the loudest of any stadium in the country – loud enough to hit low points on the richter scale. My mom loves hearing that when she knows we’re hanging out on a fault line.

Seahawks fans are known as the 12th man because their noise serves as a 12th man on the team, affecting how the other team plays. But at the Sounders game I saw that the fans are much more than just loud noise.

The game I went to was a rivalry game – Seattle Sounders vs. Portland Timbers (we won, woo!). And so while the loudest Seattle fans hung out right behind one of the goals, a top section was clearly completely occupied by Portland fans. Both sections had drums, both had chants that were more verbal than what I grew up with in Cleveland (Can I get a D-Fence anyone?)

Here are just a few of the Sounders chants, which sounded almost tribal with the ohh-ing and the drums:

Seattle

The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle
And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle
Like a beautiful child, growing up, free an’ wild
Full of hopes an’ full of fears, full of laughter, full of tears
Full of dreams to last the years, in Seattle
. . . in Seattle!

AND

Us Verses Them

Whoa…Oh…Oh…Hey…Hey…Hey… (four times)
When it’s us versus them, you can always count on me
When it’s us versus them, it’s a Sounders unity
(repeat).

There are several more, many of which actually don’t appear on the website. And I know there’s even more for the Seahawks. At one point, the score was 1-1 and the Portland section was getting pretty loud. That was until the Sounders scored a second goal. Then the Seattle fans section started chanting, “It’s getting pretty quiet over there!”

I laughed. The Sounders won. Victory.