Tag: Morgan Weaver

Lo’eau LaBonta offers up an NWSL Celebration of the Year frontrunner

We’re making up a very important award

Lo’eau LaBonta is in good form, on the soccer side and the entertainment side.

The Kansas City Current midfielder bagged a late equalizer for her side in a 1-1 draw with Angel City FC Friday night. Just moments after the visitors had taken the lead, LaBonta drew a foul in the box, and then got up to fire home the penalty kick, preserving a Current unbeaten run that is now 11 games long.

LaBonta is having a career year for Kansas City, with the goal taking her total up to five in the regular season, along with four assists, and made NWSL’s Team of the Month for August.

She also seems ready to push the league forward on the celebration front. After firing a typically powerful penalty kick into the upper corner, LaBonta gave the home fans a brief scare, feigning a glute injury before…well, let’s say she made it clear she had no such injury.

It’s equal parts twerking and Willy Wonka. Just tremendous work from LaBonta, and worthy of further consideration.

LaBonta said after the game that celebrations in women’s soccer tend to be more like what Angel City offered up when Cari Roccaro gave them the lead: the scorer raises their arms, teammates rush in for a group hug, and that’s that.

“Female soccer players tend to just all go to each other and ‘Kumbaya,’ and we love that,” LaBonta told reporters after the game. “I think we really want to start making it a little more fun and having individual celebration. So, that was sent to me on Twitter, and I said ‘bet.'”

LaBonta does have some challengers to best when it comes to the NWSL Celebration of the Year, an award that should exist in reality but is currently just contained within this article.

Washington Spirit and U.S. women’s national team forward Trinity Rodman may be her strongest competition. Rodman and teammate Ashley Sanchez have had a few Tiktok-inspired celebrations throughout 2022, and have shown no signs of turning towards a more conventional celebration.

Rodman most recently offered up an iconic pose after powering through the North Carolina Courage defense to score.

Portland Thorns striker Morgan Weaver offered up another, more obscure celebration earlier this month, offering up some kind of high-stepping, hand-swinging puzzler.

A rare Becky Sauerbrunn goal earlier this year brought up another candidate, with Sauerbrunn recently explaining that it was a tribute to her partner doing the same pose before—you guessed it—a keg stand in college. There are few times college keg stand behavior should be replicated, but this was indisputably one of them.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ChaJGe2FKpW/

Pro Soccer Wire will of course keep you up to date on all NWSL Celebration of the Year candidates, and hopefully more players will take up LaBonta’s challenge to really push the limits.

[lawrence-related id=5714,5442,6028]