WASHINGTON — Harry Shipp is a Windy City kid, born and raised. Signing with the Chicago Fire as a homegrown player in 2014, the Notre Dame alumnus quickly emerged as the face of the club. As a local product who nearly won MLS Rookie of the Year, Shipp figured he was in for the long haul.
But while Shipp had found success individually, compiling 10 goals and 14 assists over his first two MLS seasons, the Fire languished at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. This past offseason, general manager Nelson Rodriguez and coach Veljko Paunovic took the reins — and with a new regime came new thinking.
With the Fire midway through preseason in February, the news emerged: Chicago had sent Shipp to the Montreal Impact for allocation money.
"It was tough at first for sure because I wasn't expecting it, so it takes so long to process it," Shipp said on the Goal USA podcast . "For those two, three weeks after it happened, you're literally asked a million times a day, 'Oh my god, I can't believe this happened. Why did this happen? What do you think was going through their head?' You start to have all of these things that make you doubt yourself."
Nearly six months later, Shipp looks at home in Montreal. With two goals and three assists in 20 matches (16 starts), the 24-year-old is a key piece for a 7-5-9 Impact team looking to better its Eastern Conference semifinal run last season.
For a while, however, life's complications loomed large. The lifelong Chicagoan didn't embrace navigating a new city or learning the language in French-speaking Quebec. Shipp and his girlfriend abruptly found themselves in a long-distance relationship. Moving to Canada also presented logistical annoyances, such as setting up a new bank and cellphone plan.
And his comfort level with the Impact wasn't much better. Forging bonds on a new team is easier said than done, and the same could be said of blocking out one's off-the-field tribulations.
"You're trying to worry about all of these things at once, and it gets kind of overwhelming," Shipp said. "I didn't do the best job at first of separating them in my mind, and I think people forget that we're humans too. They want us to be robots and be able to separate everything when you're on the field.
"For me, for a few weeks it was tough. I wasn't happy. I wasn't myself on the field. I wasn't myself off the field. I was anxious all the time. I wasn't happy, ever."
Yet Shipp has always leaned on resilience. Perpetually doubted as a prospect because of his unassuming size and athleticism, he knows he's "never been a prodigy." But he's risen through the ranks all the same.
In recent months, Shipp moved past his apprehension about life in Montreal. A three-week break for the Copa America Centenario allowed the midfielder to take a breather and find his routine, on and off the field. Having instinctively compared Montreal to Chicago, he began to embrace the city for "what's new and different."
Shipp also feels more at home in the Impact locker room, even convincing his American teammates to meet up for "The Bachelorette" watch parties. Although the busy midseason stretch has meant putting French lessons on hold, he's still using an app on his phone to develop vocabulary.
"If I had a bad practice, I was going home and beating myself up for eight hours, every day after practice, thinking about every single thing I did wrong," Shipp said. "[Then] you get a routine in a new city where I could do things outside of soccer — that helped me kind of break away from it so I wasn't always beating myself up about the things I wasn't doing well."
Feeling at ease, Shipp has returned to form. Forced to battle for his starting spot midseason, he has started five straight MLS matches entering Saturday's clash with the Houston Dynamo. And the past month has seen Shipp score his first two goals in an Impact uniform.
"I finally feel like myself again," Shipp said. "I'm positive, I'm enjoying life, and I think that's a big difference in terms of how I'm playing on the field."
Check out the full episode of the Goal USA podcast above as Shipp goes into depth about that surprising trade from Chicago to Montreal, his unconventional path to the professional ranks, life in the locker room with Didier Drogba and much more.
..... - Goal