It was late August in San Diego, but Washington Spirit midfielder and National Women’s Soccer League rookie Hal Hershfelt was in the mood for pumpkin.
“That’s just how things are,” she explained to her audience while seated at a table outside Ox Coffee.
It was the latest stop on the Spirit’s away game journey that summer, and thus the tour of coffee shops she and her teammates have embarked upon where they taste, rate, and review their drinks on Hershfelt’s TikTok page.
“I like mine a lot,” Hershfelt said, beaming over an iced pumpkin latte with almond milk. “I give it, like … ” she paused to contemplate her score, “an eight [out of 10], honestly. It’s pretty good.” Next up was forward Lena Silano, who features regularly on the coffee review videos.
Despite the barista misspelling her name with an “i” instead of an “e,” the Southern California native was thrilled to be back in SoCal and rated her iced honey cinnamon latte with oat milk an 8.2.
The star of this episode, however, was Leicy Santos, the crafty Colombian midfielder who signed with the Spirit in April, but did not join the team in D.C. until mid-August, a few weeks before the video was made. Santos offered a tentative seven out of 10 for her iced latte — a respectable assessment from a player who hails from the third-largest coffee producer in the world.
“I love just bringing new people along and forcing them to be in the video,” Hershfelt told INDIVISA. “They’re like, ‘But I’m nervous,’ and I’m like, ‘Just do it!’ The people love it.”
Coffee supremacy in the National Women’s Soccer League is multi-pronged: more than a handheld stimulant, it’s the ultimate accessory to any pregame fit (and, frankly, complements a look or a fresh manicure far better than a clunky Oura ring), and an excuse to spend more time with teammates. Its plethora of options mean there’s a coffee order to delight every set of taste buds – hot, iced, or blended; stirred or topped with milk (or milky alternatives) in various states of solidity; pumped with syrups that span the flavor spectrum. And if not, there’s always tea. In fact, NWSL players’ adoration for coffee has grown so strong, some have started to monetize it, channeling the laser focus and dedication they bring to the soccer field toward a new venture.
Long before Hershfelt was selected by the Spirit, she loved beginning her mornings with a cup of coffee. Despite her bold red hair and tattooed sleeve, the 23-year-old was shy when she joined her first professional team. The Spirit players regularly went out for coffee in D.C., but she was hesitant to whip out her phone to capture content right away.
“But as I got a little more comfortable, I was like, ‘Hey, do you guys wanna do a coffee review?’” she recalled. She enlisted the services of Silano and fellow rookie Kate Weisner for the inaugural video. The location? Portland’s 40 Lbs Coffee Bar.
For Hershfelt, coffee outings are connective tissue when the team is on the road “because you’re kind of stuck in a random city with your teammates. You don’t have anything to do. We have big chunks of time that we have absolutely nothing to do with after practice, so it’s an easy, quick way to get a big group of us together, go try somewhere fun, and have a nice cup of coffee.”
It’s clear Hershfelt and her teammates know what they like and aren’t afraid to administer a low score if their expectations aren’t met. But they aren’t snobs, either; Silano jokingly handles her coffee cups the way an influencer does a new capsule of makeup in an unboxing video, placing her hand behind the product to aid in the camera’s focus. And none of Hershfelt’s coffee reviews are complete without a sprinkling of bloopers. But this isn’t just a social activity – behind the scenes of her TikTok productions are the conversations she and her teammates have had with the team nutritionist about how to use coffee to their advantage when they’re in competition.
Spirit performance dietician Taylor Cintron told INDIVISA that she values the ritual of meeting up with friends at a cafe. She not only understands why players do it so frequently, but prefers to work with them on how to make the best choices rather than dissuade them from drinking coffee altogether. “A lot of times, they’ll come in in the tunnel and they’re carrying their coffee,” Cintron says. “That’s still a couple hours before the game.
A lot of these drinks are loaded with simple sugar carbohydrates, and it actually doesn’t supply them with the long-term energy they need three hours from now when they play a match. So a lot of the time, it’s more like a crash that can happen. “My job is [to say], ‘Hey, if you’re gonna have this on the way to the stadium, what can we do once you get here to add more additional long-term carbohydrates? Because we can’t rely on this as our fuel source.’ “
Cintron emphasized that with coffee, timing is the most important element. When the team plays an evening game, she considers how a late-afternoon coffee might affect sleep that night, which is when most of the body’s repair and recovery happens. Lots of athletes have trouble processing milk and other dairy products; players who fancy a pregame latte or any other drink with frothy foam or whipped cream could be at risk of an upset stomach come game time, Cintron says.
Speaking of coffee’s effect on the digestive system – specifically, how caffeine zooms through the body, rushing along a natural process that could end up presenting itself at the utmost inconvenience – Cintron has thoughts about that, too, and it ultimately boils down to planning. “I think a lot of our players for the most part at this point have their bathroom regimen and know they might get an anxious stomach, and they know to always go to the bathroom two hours before,” she says. “By the time we get to that game, they kinda know what’s happening. But if, for some reason, someone is using the bathroom right before game time, I’m checking in with them after. ‘What did we eat before? How much caffeine did we have? Do we need to rehydrate now?’” No matter the time of day, a lot can be revealed in a coffee order, and Hershfelt noted that over the course of the season, the Spirit’s cafe dates have offered a new dimension for the team to get to know each other.
Weisner fancies the occasional house surprise (where the barista whips up whatever tickles their fancy) or specialty menu item, like an edible coffee cup from 1 Oz Coffee in Santa Clara that the defender found underwhelming. Goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury tends to keep things simple with a flat white, which Hershfelt said matches her Type A personality.
“I feel like we all know each other’s coffee orders by now,” she said. Knowledge of such details is a pretty reliable marker of friendship in the women’s soccer world and beyond, but six Kansas City Current players took their coffee bond a step further by going into business together with it. The idea came about after preseason training one day in February, Current midfielder Desiree Scott explained, when she, defender Elizabeth Ball, midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo, forward Kristen Hamilton, defender Hailie Mace, and defender Mallory Weber first joked about the concept. But then they started taking it seriously. Originally, they wanted to open a brick and mortar space, said Scott, “and then realized, OK, let’s reign it in a little bit.’ “
They decided that a coffee truck was a more feasible route – financially and logistically. While many of the co-owners were comfortable operating their own personal espresso makers, they didn’t have any prior work experience with coffee before embarking on what they eventually named Pitchside Coffee. “A lot of us have used the Breville at-home machines, and getting on our [Pitchside] machine for the first time was crazy,” Ball said. “We were like, ‘The steamer just heats up in one second. The one at home takes about 45.’”
“Milk was goin’ everywhere,” Hamilton chimed in with a laugh. “It was definitely a learning curve.”
Ball cited TJ Roberts, who owns Kinship Cafe in Kansas City, and educated her and her co-owners on the science and art of coffee. Whenever they could, the player-owners stopped by the cafe after Current training for an hour or two, and took notes to share with anyone who couldn’t make it that day. “He’s been super helpful in letting us come to his shop, showing us how to use the machine, teaching us about how to grind, how to weigh out your shots, how to pour shots, how to steam milk,” said Ball. “There’s just so many little nuances that I didn’t know, and I don’t think a lot of the girls knew, either. We’re still learning every day, but we’ve had a lot of good mentorship from TJ and we’ve learned a lot.” Hamilton added, “Just the different wash processes required of certain coffee beans, to how coffee grows and is harvested, to the impact of the sun and the climate it grows in – it can go down and down and down [the list].”
That education has also made coffee – a beverage and culture that has at times been co-opted by the same high-nosed, classist, gatekeeping impulses that plague the wine and culinary worlds – feel more accessible. “You always see these words when you’re reading coffee bags and looking at different coffees, and you’re like, ‘That means really nothing to me,’ ” Hamilton said. “You’re looking at the tasting notes and you’re like, ‘Cool, that sounds good,’ but to have an idea of how those flavors come to be in that coffee is pretty interesting.” And, like any other craft, learning about coffee’s intricacies has transformed the consumer experience – for better or worse.
“I walk in a different person now at coffee shops because of all of our knowledge,” Scott said. Now, they comment on details that span the size of the cups, the amount of milk used in each drink, and the quality of the microfoam. “We’ll be like, ‘I don’t think you pulled that shot for the right amount of seconds.’ Our friends that aren’t in coffee are like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Ball said, to which they’ll usually reply, ‘“You’ll see when you taste it. It’s a little sour.’”
When it came time to create Pitchside’ Coffee’s identity, the owners pulled from memorable experiences at other cafes that they wanted to emulate, as well as their own personal goals for the business. Ball knew, for example, that she wanted to honor Australia’s commitment to modestly-sized coffee cups that she observed on a trip there, and everybody agreed to prioritize the subtle, complex flavors of espresso over the heavy use of milk and sweet syrups that could overpower it. “That was something that was super important to us, actually creating good coffee and not just [opening] a coffee shop and thinking that because we’re athletes, it’ll sell,” Hamilton said.
“When you have a good cup of coffee, you remember it, and you remember a bad cup of coffee. Having had the whole range of really good and really terrible coffees, to make sure that we can bring the best cup of coffee to Kansas City [that] we can.” Like Hershfelt, Scott’s morning ritual includes a fresh cup of coffee. She wanted to capture the way those cozy at-home coffees made her feel, and fold it into Pitchside’s Ethos.
“There’s something about feeling at home and the sense of togetherness that a cup of coffee could bring, not only for myself in my daily world, but because it brings people together,” she said. “For me, it’s like you’re holding that cup and it just makes you smile. That’s the friendships that we’ve built, the coffee that we’re drinking, and just that sense of community that everyone can come and enjoy Pitchside and do that together.” Five months after that fateful preseason coffee date, Pitchside Coffee hard-launched at First Fridays, a monthly event that draws local musicians, vendors, food trucks, and good neighborly cheer to the artsy neighborhood of Crossroads in Kansas City. Up until that point, the Pitchside players had only organized a few intimate, unofficial openings for family members and close friends to sample the coffee and offer feedback.
Bringing Pitchside to the general public, however, was a different matter. They didn’t know what to expect. “We posted about it [on social media] a few days before, pulled up in our little truck with the trailer in the back, and there were already people standing there waiting for us and we weren’t set to open for another hour,” Ball said. “We had a line down the street and around the block for over two hours.” Hamilton recalled a collective moment of “Oh my gosh. What are we doing?” when they saw how many people had been waiting in line in the slumping summer heat – and how, as they’ve done so many times before on the soccer field, they put their heads down and ground out solutions. While the five others got to work making coffee, Hamilton grabbed a Sharpie and a speaker, and then went to greet the crowd, many of whom were Current fans.
“We had music playing, I went out and was signing autographs and taking pictures with people to be like, ‘Thanks for coming. Sorry the line’s so long, but we’re just getting started, trying to get our bar flowing.’ It was a lot of fun, a little stressful, but it was amazing to see the turnout,” she said.
Since then, Pitchside has held a smattering of coffee pop ups across town, and has already undergone a rebrand, having announced a new website and expanded merch offerings earlier this week. Hamilton said they don’t plan on hiring anyone else to run Pitchside Coffee just yet, so their opening hours will be limited by their professional schedules, which they extended into the postseason this year when the Current clinched a spot in the playoffs back in September. Until then, the players will have to settle for cortados, cappuccinos, and shots in the dark (a shot of espresso thrown into a cup of black coffee, Ball’s preferred drink) made out of house as they toil on a different pitch, grinding toward a different goal: an NWSL championship.