Reign Hold Off Late Wave

SEATTLE - The Reign didn't play their best for much of Sunday night's game, but it was a win nonetheless as the marathon extends to its final legs.

Often times, when a team is talking about the difference between process and results, it is because they suffered a bad loss and are looking for a silver lining (and for something that their players can glom onto in order to turn things around in future games). On Sunday, it was the opposite: the Reign had three points to look back on but also a lot to work on as they nearly gave away their slim lead numerous times in the second half.

Reign head coach Laura Harvey described such games as "the best time to really dig in" when it comes to bringing her players to the next level.

And after Sunday's win, the Seattle Reign sit in eighth place in the NWSL with 34 total points and a game in hand against all teams above them. For the team of early 2026 that could hardly find a goal if everything depended on it, it's a massive improvement; for a team that was projected to finish ninth to meaningfully improve upon that figure going forward (in both actual and underlying stats) would be the kind of step forward that Harvey's side has been looking for ever since Megan Rapinoe's retirement and Rose Lavelle's departure for Gotham.

The one goal the team scored on Sunday was a Maddie-to-Maddie connection, emblematic of the up-and-coming talent the team is becoming defined by. Maddie Dahlien - the one who assisted the goal scored by Maddie Mercado - commented on the burgeoning bond between the team's forwards

"We find each other a lot in training and so it's just really exciting to see her flourish this year, she deserved it so much, she's such a hard worker," Dahlien said. "And it's really cool to see our attacking front evolve and create relationships on the field. But just super happy for her and happy to get that goal."

One of those young players, 19-year-old midfielder Ainsley McCammon, is currently with the US U-20 women's team in the U20 World Cup in Poland and so wasn't in the lineup for Seattle on Sunday. Her absence was notable in the midfield, as while Angharad "Haz" James-Turner held her own as one of the pivots alongside Sam Meza, she wasn't quite as clinical as McCammon has been in recent games and McCammon's absence was probably a contributing factor to the team's second half breakdown in play quality.

San Diego got red-carded early in the first half, and once Mercado sent one in, Seattle had the early edge for real.

The last time the Reign went up a player in the first 15 minutes, things didn't exactly manifest to the team's advantage for the rest of the game.

Seattle got a chance to redeem itself in that regard after just a bit of back-and-forth in the early game. Lumen Field reacted strongly as Maddie Dahlien worked towards a breakaway in the 10th minute and got tripped up by Amelia Van Zanten as she charged forward, and after a half minute of confused play, referee Abdou Ndiaye called for VAR. The ruling was a red card for denial of goal-scoring opportunity.

There had evidently been some learning, at least where the first half was concerned. Instead of immediately stepping off the gas as had been the case back in Portland, the Reign turned it into 20 minutes of consistent threats on net.

The connections were working well, with an 18th minute free kick leading to a look for Sally Menti in front of net. Haz had a bad giveaway in the 28th minute but recovered well enough to prevent the Wave from going out through the middle, and Mercado took it away before dropping it off to Sam Meza, who rushed forward and took a shot from distance that went a little wide of the net. Though she missed and the Wave got a goal kick, the Reign kept up the momentum and, eventually, it produced a goal.

The team had been threatening the goal off and on for a little under 20 minutes by the time they finally punched one in, and one slip from the visitors in the 29th minute was enough to get the Reign up. Still, it took some good movement on and off the ball from Seattle, as Haz distributed it out to Sofia Huerta on the left and sent it up for Dahlien in the corner. Dahlien seemingly effortlessly curled a cross into the box towards Mercado and the latter leapt over Perle Morroni to head it into the back of the net.

No sooner had the goal arrived than did the Reign offense finally begin to slow. For the rest of the game, the hosts would find themselves on the back foot. The immediate threats in the first half dissipated, however, and gave the team time to breathe.

Kimmi Ascanio wasted Haz in the fourth minute of stoppage and deked out Maddie Mercado two seconds later, and although the Reign contained the immediate threat, they had to concede a corner on one side and then another on the other side after Jordyn Bugg barely blocked a would-be equalizer. The Wave ran out of time to equalize in the first half, however, and Seattle went into half with their 1-0 lead intact.

Seattle made a lot of mistakes in the second half, but they held on to take the points home.

The Wave continued to have the lion's share of the possession in the early minutes of the second half, and though there were interspersed moments of Reign possession and even half-danger, the hosts found it difficult to actually use their man advantage to create overloads and get themselves on the front foot. Instead, they found themselves consistently frightened when the Wave would double-team the momentary ball carrier, possessing a certain myopia about what was happening in other areas of the pitch. This myopia deepened further as the half progressed, with the team increasingly skating to where the puck had been, as it were, instead of skating to where the puck was going. Was the hockey metaphor necessary when the actual sport the teams were playing showed enough of that concept already? Probably not. But it gives you the idea.

San Diego had their first of many dangerous second half moments as Morroni picked Phoebe McClernon's pocket in the box and sent it to Trinity Byars, who dropped it off for Ascanio to shoot on net. Ascanio's shot got blocked, but the ball went back to Byars, and she half-bicycled it over the net.

Seattle was having issues in their midfield connection by this point, with a giveaway soon after that play leading to a free kick quite close to the box in the 58th minute, though just as every chance the visitors had to this point, the Reign deflected it and kept the danger from coming too close to the net.

The Reign even had some incredible buildup as they brought the ball back across the pitch, as Menti found Dahlien with a tremendous backwards flip-kick over to the left side. But the Wave blocked the advancing Reign as they tried to find a look into the final third, something that started to become a pattern as Dahlien and Huerta lost the ball at the edge of the box on after a 63rd minute breakaway.

By this point in the game, Seattle had long stopped bringing enough numbers forward in their attacking movements, but their lack of sharpness on and off the ball all but neutralized the red card advantage during many of the runs of play over the late minutes of the half. And where the Reign had been drawing much of the fouls in the first half, the Wave got them in the second; Kenza Dali would have equalized on a 65th minute free kick had Dickey not made an incredible dive to grab the curling strike.

That nearly became a moot point five minutes later as Dickey left her spot and tried to get a ball that was in play to her right. Ryanne Brown put herself in net and made a heads-up clearance, but the danger hadn't subsided yet: the ensuing corner nearly found the net were it not for another quick move from Dickey.

By this point in the game, the fits and starts of danger for the Wave had become the basic game state. The aforementioned extension of the myopia and tunneling had nearly completed itself, and even when the Wave were down two players (one down on the field and the other Van Zanten with the red), the visitors outmatched the hosts seemingly effortlessly with the ball and sliced through into the final third with unsettling ease.

The best chance of all for the Wave came in the 81st minute as all this slicing and dicing gathered to allow Ludmila to work in behind the Reign line and fire a contested shot towards an open net. Dickey made sure it was very contested, as she collided with Ludmila and the both of them fell to the ground as the ball went out.

Both players stayed on the ground for an extended period of time. Dickey was bleeding from her face as the Reign trainers tended to her, and though Ludmila wound up staying in the game, Cassie Miller had to sub in for Dickey for the rest of the game.

On the bright side, the stoppage in play all but ended the Wave's momentum, and the Reign much more easily saw out the remaining 10 minutes of play once the game resumed.

Harvey also attributed the dwindling of visiting attacks to a change in pressing structure that she wished she had enacted at halftime but that she used two late substitutions - Nérilia Mondésir for Maddie Dahlien and Maddy Curry for Ryanne Brown - as a means to enforce.

"We couldn't get pressure on the ball and protect what we needed to protect," Harvey said. "When we brought Coco on, we decided to get our wingers to press and keep Jess and Maddie (Mercado) central, and we should have done that earlier."

The mental aspect of not pressing the red card advantage remains an issue to work on.

Perhaps the instinct that Harvey wants to instill is that of ripping open an advantage once it presents itself; for the players to make themselves hungrier for a goal when their opponents are weakened rather than pulling back.

This is something that the players also brought up to the media after Sunday's game, with the juxtaposition between the Portland disaster and the win against the Wave crystal clear. Their competitive intuitions provided plenty of the spark, but there was still an issue adjusting to a new thing, even if that new thing was advantageous on its face.

The frantic mess that led to the late collision could have very easily (and several times nearly did) become an equalizer for the visitors; had the team instead found the precision for another goal or two, they could have completely iced their opponents' chances. For dozens of minutes, the Wave's simple tactic of high double-teamed presses on whichever Reign player brought the ball forward worked to frighten the hosts, and it's something the team will need to remedy going forward.

It wasn't the embarrassment they had seen in Providence Park months before, but it was still beneath the standard this team sets for themselves.

And that slowness to adjust - that proneness to being caught flat-footed - is perhaps the biggest overarching takeaway that Harvey got from the game.

"We're very much a team that, we build from our game plan. And when we execute our game plan well and the team that we're playing does what we expect, really good things happen," Harvey said. "When our game plan suddenly has to shift and change, we find that challenging. So that's something we just need to get relatively better at."

Ainsley McCammon's absence was evident despite some solid midfield play.

Both Ainsley McCammon and Emeri Adames were with the U20 USA Women's team in Poland (and had actually played a match there on the same day).

Adames, despite some very promising play in 2025, had lost her spot in the top of the rotation during the 2026 season while Mercado found the net time and again. But McCammon had become one of the clear powerhouses the team had in the midfield, turning the work rate and takeaways of her teammates (often Sam Meza) into attacking movements for Seattle.

Haz had good field vision at enough times to get the win - she saw the line through Huerta up the left side that led to Mercado's first half goal - but perhaps McCammon could have ameliorated the team's issues in missing potential overloads. Whether she would have raised the standard of play around her or whether the general disorganized milieu would have lowered her own standard is, of course, an unknowable counterfactual.

But although she didn't have the top-level presence that McCammon might have, James-Turner still made things tough for her opponents at points.

"Again, they're a really tough midfield, they combine really well," Harvey said. "But especially in the second half, I thought she (James-Turner) was the one winning the most duels ... putting her foot in and nicking things and breaking play up."

And the midfield trio of Haz, Meza, and Sally Menti (replaced by Jess Fishlock in the 64th) were the powerhouses behind the team's 20-minute run of strong play. Menti's development has particularly been stark, as she is now arguably better as a 10 for the team than she ever was as a six or an eight.

Dahlien, who has been connecting plenty with Menti during the team's recent games, commented on that process.

It was that breaking down of midfield ability later in the game (especially defensively) that turned the Reign's lead-protecting efforts from managed to frenzied.

Despite all the struggles, the win showed growth from the young side.

Things didn't go their way for more than half of the match. They faced a marked shift in play style from a set of opponents who, once backed into a corner, fought their hardest.

And yet the Reign won. This was unlike what had happened earlier in the year and indeed unlike what had transpired plenty of times in 2025, too. It was the kind of win that a ninth place finisher wouldn't often claw out - and thus a sign that things are looking up from their preseason projections.

This mental toughness over the long haul juxtaposes the team's issues in making quick in-game adjustments. For opposing teams, it means that while it's comparatively easier to knock them off their rhythm for a day, doing so over the course of weeks or months is more difficult.

But if each team in their turn all knock Seattle off their rhythm, then their long-term grit won't end up amounting to more than a Sisyphean cycle. Games like Sundays are the only ways to hone their quick adjustment skills during the middle of games and especially during the middle of halves.

It's a test of adrenaline, willpower, and the application of the fact that the team needs every point it can get.

"Points are a premium. Someone asked me yesterday, 'do you think we're officially in the playoff push?' and I said, 'that started on July 4,'" Harvey said. "After what was a really good start to the season, we had a really tough May, and we put ourselves in a position where we couldn't afford for that to keep happening. And I think you've just seen a shift in us, a shift. Whether it be seeing games out, whether it be scoring multiple goals - that's sort of something we need to get back to - but there's been a definite shift in mentality."