Hands-on fan

Massage therapist gets big kick out of Power's Norwegians

Jeff Wergeland, of Norwegian descent, is a big fan of Gro Espeseth (left) and Anne Nielsen.

Editor's note: Massage therapist Jeff Wergeland is the first fan referred through the Fantastic Fan nomination contest.

By Gloria Chung

Jeff Wergeland, a native of San Diego and of Norwegian descent, has proved that you don't have to live in New York to be a Power fan.

He saw his first European soccer match in Norway in 1991 and has become a bigger fan of the sport since then. While working in Norway in 1996, he was able to watch every Olympic match of the Norwegian women's national team. This helped pave the way to becoming a big fan of Gro Espeseth and Ann Kristin Aarones, the Power's two Norwegian internationals.

Wergeland, who has a five-year-old son Johann -- named after Norwegian Olympic gold medal speedskater Johann Olav Koss -- with wife Lori, works in the field of therapeutic massage and has a business fittingly named Nordic Touch.

His three main passions are "doing massage, all things Norwegian, and soccer, especially women's soccer." Having worked in Norway five of the last six years, the first two of those passions were readily achieved. But it wasn't until this past March that all three passions came to fruition.

During the last week of March, the Olympic Training Center near San Diego was the site of the leaguewide WUSA spring training. When Wergeland heard the news, he sought to do something special for the league's five Norwegian players. Wergeland wrote a two-page letter to each of the players and made the short trip to the Training Center with no idea how to deliver the letters. But as luck would have it, he didn't need a plan.

"Somebody came up to me and started speaking Norwegian to me," he said. "I had a Norwegian shirt on and was carrying a Norwegian flag and my son had a Norwegian shirt on. It turned out that he was the agent of Gro and Anka. So I gave the letters to him, and he gave them to Gro and Anka. Then Gro called me at home that night. That's how everything took off."

His purpose in writing the letters was to let the players know that the Norwegians in San Diego would do anything they could to support them, including sightseeing.

At the end of his letters, he mentioned that he does sports massage and offer complimentary sessions to the player. Wergeland admits he thought it was a prank when he got a phone call from someone saying she was Gro.

"When Gro called she said, 'I don't know if we have time for sightseeing but Anka and I would really like to have a massage,'" he said. "She asked if I could come and work with her and Anka the next day. I went down [to the Olympic Training Center] thinking I would spend maybe an hour to two hours on them but they were excused from their team dinner that night, and I ended up spending seven hours with them.

"Each of them got two-and-a-half-hour massages," he said. "It was the best experience I've ever had working with anybody. I left there feeling like this is exactly what I want to do -- if I could just work with soccer players, that would be the best possible job for me."

Espeseth and Aarones were equally grateful for Wergeland's support and sent him an email the following day thanking him. They told him that Power head coach Pat Farmer was going to let them go sightseeing with him.

Wergeland took Carolina's Hege Riise and Bente Nordby in addition to Espeseth and Aarones to a dinner with his Norwegian organization that celebrated Norway's gold medal performance at the 2000 Olympics.

After having such a good experience working with Espeseth and Aarones, Wergeland wanted to volunteer to do sports massages for the entire Power team. Espeseth put him in contact with the Power trainer and when everything was said and done, Wergeland worked with 14 of the 16 Power players the day before their match against the San Diego Spirit.

Wergeland's experiences with all of the Power players proved to be extremely memorable, especially with Tiffeny Milbrett.

"Tiffeny made a joke about how I was working on Gro too long," Wergeland explained. "She said, 'Do you give special treatment only to the Norwegians?' So I said, 'I'll give you special treatment too.' Most of the players were getting about 20 minutes because that's all I had time for. But because no one else came in after 20 minutes, she got a double session. Afterwards, she got up off of the massage table and said, 'If I want to hire you privately when I come to San Diego, can I have your business card?' For me, that was the best compliment anyone has ever given me."

Wergeland's game experience the next day was equally unforgettable. To show his support for the Power, he bought 51 tickets to the game with his own money and resold all of them to people in the Norwegian community. Throughout the game, Espeseth and Aarones, as well as the entire Power team heard the cheering section and beat the Spirit, 1-0.

"Most of us had Norwegian flags and were wearing Norwegian shirts," he said. "Every time Gro came to our side of the field we were chanting and yelling so loud, and she looked up and waved. The whole team came over to our section after the game. It was amazing. Then we organized a party afterwards, and Gro brought Gao Hong with her, so we had a party that night for Gro and Gao."

As if this show of support weren't enough, the next time the Power came to San Diego for the third and final meeting between the two teams, Wergeland purchased 77 tickets. But this time the tickets were diversified -- 44 tickets went to Norwegians, six went to Danish supporters of Anne Nielsen, and 27 were for Chinese fans of Gao Hong.

Wergeland again worked with the Power the day before the game but there was a little disappointment. Milbrett wasn't at the game due to national team commitments. This gave Wergeland the idea to drive up to Northern California at his own expense to work with the Power when they were in San Jose to play the CyberRays. He spent the entire weekend with the Power, and got to work with Milbrett for close to two hours.

Wergeland has yet to miss a minute of the Power season and doesn't intend to. The closest that he came to missing any of the action was on June 7th, when the Power played the Carolina Courage. The game was of extra importance because it was being played on Norwegian independence from Sweden day. And in the Power-Courage game, there were four Norwegian players on the pitch.

"Coverage for both teams was local cable only but someone from the Carolina PR department gave me the satellite coordinates and I took it to the sports bar that I go to and we got it," Wergeland explained. "But just to back everything up I made arrangements with somebody from New York to FedEx a tape to me so we could watch it the next day and pretend that it was live."

Wergeland may have had to pretend that it was live, but other than that, his experiences with the New York Power have proven to be anything but pretend.

(c)womenssoccer.com 2001