When OL Reign clinched their third and most improbable Shield at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League regular season, they instantly became the favorites in the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. Now, the Reign are aiming to return to the NWSL Championship for the first time since 2015, and will open their postseason campaign on Sunday, when they host the Kansas City Current, the No. 5 seed.
But contrary to what might be suggested by winning the NWSL Shield, the league’s award for the best team of the regular season, the Reign didn’t dominate their way through 2022. Unlike the Reign’s previous Shield wins in the NWSL’s early days, this one didn’t come easy.
For starters, consider how they secured the Shield on the final day of the season: the Reign defeated the Orlando Pride 3-0 a few hours after their rivals and season-long favorites, the Portland Thorns, stumbled to a 3-3 road draw at last-place NJ/NY Gotham FC.
Portland’s result opened the door for the Reign to win the Shield by one point, while the Reign had not finished any week prior this season on top of the table.
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The Reign’s victory to close out the season was a fourth straight and an extension of a seven-game unbeaten streak in league play that helped the Seattle side chase down the Shield. Their last loss? A 2-1 defeat at home on Aug. 7 against the Houston Dash.
In hindsight, that loss appears to have been a turning point. On that day, the Reign led only 1-0 at halftime despite dominating the Dash. Then, Dash forward Ebony Salmon scored twice in two minutes, and the Reign fell to sixth place, just above the playoff line.
“I feel like this group had a choice to make after the Houston game at home of: What team are we going to be?” Reign coach Laura Harvey said recently. “Are we going to be this team that plays great football, creates a ton of chances, but doesn’t quite get there? There was a chance we weren’t going to get into the playoffs…
“I feel like something changed in the group that week where there was a real mentality shift of, we know that we’re good. We know we’re talented. We know that we have the ability to win games because we’d been doing it. We’d been creating so many chances in games and not punishing teams. You could have that as your story, right? Didn’t make it because we couldn’t finish our chances. But since then, we’ve sort of turned into a different team a little bit.”
If playoffs are about peaking at the right time, the Reign faithful may be uncomfortable without knowing whether the Reign will enter playoffs still in red-hot form or cooled off from the break.
Awaiting the Reign, however, is unfinished business, as Rapinoe called it. There was the disappointment of 2014 and 2015. Last year, the Reign nearly chased down the Thorns for the Shield, but came up two points short before losing to the Washington Spirit in the semifinals.
“It has been elusive,” Rapinoe said. “We did not forget — ever — the championships that we lost after dominant years. So, we want to continue this run of form that we’re in. I feel like we have really good momentum.”
Harvey noted that most NWSL champions of yesteryear have not been the most dominant team in the league, but rather the team in the right form at the right time. That is not entirely true — the North Carolina Courage went wire-to-wire in 2018 and 2019 — but it is how life played out for the Reign previously.
