It was 2012 when I joined the Black and Red United staff to write a weekly MLS Fantasy column and run the fantasy leagues. At the time, I hadn’t even played much fantasy soccer, let alone MLS Fantasy. At the time I had essentially closed up my own blog, Quarter Volley, which had its roots all the way back when Blogspot was the place to write. I brought my statistical analysis columns to Black and Red United and chipped in elsewhere on B&RU when needed.

Every winter since 2012, with the exception of my 2024 hiatus after my mother passed, I have looked at my personal calendar in tandem with the MLS season schedule to plot out the weeks that I’d have to write the MLS Fantasy column and when I could skip it for breaks, international or otherwise. This year I looked at my own schedule and saw packing up to leave Korea, a week-long personal trip to the US, a trans-Pacific move, being functionally homeless for a month in the summer… and I realized that I can’t do it this year, and truly it’s just time to call it quits for the fantasy column.

Fourteen years is a long time to do something, and while I’ve enjoyed it, the fun I’ve experienced has waxed and waned based on the MLS site’s knee-jerk changes to the game from year to year. This year they moved the game off of the MLS site and to something called Kickbase, an app you can download on your phone, and it really feels like the timing could not be better to hang it up. I think I’d prefer to pass on learning a new app at this point.

So now is the time to say thank you. Thank you for playing in the leagues, thank you for reading the column, and thank you for reading the District Press. I’ll still plan to be here, occasionally chipping in with Numbers Only, and I imagine a Freedom Kicks here and there, but the weekly run has come to an end. It’s been a pleasure.