You could call OL Reign San Diego Wave FC’s nemesis.
The Seattle team has never dropped a match to the Wave – they are 6-0-2 against San Diego – and has taken all four games this season.
But now it’s the NWSL playoffs and the Wave, after a bye, will welcome OL Reign for the second of Sunday’s semifinals. A sell out is expected for the 6:30 p.m. game at Snapdragon Stadium.
As midfielder Jaedyn Shaw says, it “just adds a little bit of motivation and a little bit of a chip on our shoulder going into this game.”
San Diego (11-7-4) earned the NWSL Shield as the club with the best regular-season record in just its second year of play, and is the league’s top seed. OL Reign (9-8-5), the No. 4 seed, had to defeat Angel City FC (8-7-7) in the first round to advance.
There’s another tantalizing reward for the Wave should they prevail over OL Reign – San Diego is the host city for the NWSL championship on Nov. 11, giving the team the chance Sunday to earn the right to play for the title before their home crowd.
“We’ve got a lot of respect for them as a team, but not too much,” said head coach Casey Stoney of OL Reign. “We know we’re capable. We’ve had good performances against them in the past without getting the results. We need to make sure that we’re very good at the weekend to get ourselves to the final.”
Sunday’s winner will take on either Portland (10-7-5), the defending NWSL champs, or Gotham (8-7-7) for the NWSL championship.
The Wave’s top weapons include Naomi Girma, an NWSL MVP finalist and the only defender to have been been a finalist for the award. Forwards Shaw and Alex Morgan led all scorers for San Diego; Morgan scored seven goals to Shaw’s six. Morgan added five assists, while Shaw had three.
Forward Bethany Balcer paced OL Reign with six goals, followed by Jordyn Huitema and Veronica Latsko with five goals each. The Reign, like the Wave’s Morgan, also has a superstar who has made ripples on the world soccer stage – Megan Rapinoe.
And OL Reign has a tendency toward the late attack. Five of the club’s 10 all-time goals in the playoffs have come in the 80th minute; eight of the 10 have been after the 70th minute.
The Wave, though, can take heart from this: No NWSL team ever has won five games against another team in a single calendar year.
“We know the records. We knew we hadn’t beaten Louisville and we’ve done that,” Stoney said. “So records are there to be broken. History is there to be made.”
