time stopped | 5/10/25

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at 74' in yesterday's angel city/utah royals game, 20 year old savy king collapsed on the pitch. i watched her pull up, stop her run, and crumple to the floor. megan reid, one of our centerbacks, immediately motioned to the sideline for the acfc medical team to come onto the pitch to assist.

the protocol for a player injury while attending a game is a bit weird, in any sport. you don't have the privilege of a commentary team telling you what's happening, there's no replay, there's no sideline reporter in your ear telling you what the players on the bench are saying. you can only rely on what you can see.

and what i saw was panic. hurried calls for more medical trainers from the utah bench. pantomimes for a stretcher. frantic shouting for the medical cart. a wall of people being formed around savy to block her from being seen by the players.

an oxygen mask.

chest compressions.

a defibrillator being primed.

a stadium rattled and in tears.

i have no idea how much time passed between when savy went down and when i watched the cart drive her off the pitch, into the tunnel, and to the ambulance. i wept. lost and confused and frustrated. i thought i'd watched a person die playing soccer. i wanted to go home. it is nearly impossible to make 18,000 people quiet at the same time but BMO was the quietest i've ever heard it. the match should have been called.

there's an explicit note on protocols in this situation in the league's competition bible:

instead, the league continued the game. the referee, alexandra billeter (who had a dogshit game btw), tacked on an additional 12 minutes of stoppage time. held hostage to complete a game that was suddenly meaningless in service of an obligation to a broadcaster or the sports betting contingent.

yesterday, nwsl comissioner jessica berman and the rest of the league office abdicated their responsibilities as managers and stewards of this league by not abandoning the match. alexandra billeter and her crew failed to protect the players by adding an extra 12 minutes of stoppage time in a game that clearly and obviously didn't matter anymore.

angel city won 2-0 and christen press scored her first goal in bmo stadium since 2022, after an acl tear and multiple recovery setbacks put her on the sidelines for a bit. it didn't matter. my friends and i felt nothing. they still ran the normal highlight package and player of the match presentation with the same vim and vigor as a normal win. i felt insane. no one in the building had any idea if savy was ok.

the clock kept ticking but as i was on my way home, the team and league put out statements saying that savy king was "responsive" and in the hospital.

the nwsl loves to position themselves as being on the forefront of sports on the global stage. a trendsetter, a trailblazer. a league that pioneers and engineers firsts, one that sets records. what they showed yesterday was the reality of the situation: a shiny, gaudy but fundamentally bush league operation more interested in the aesthetics of growth and change than in the work required to make it happen. calling the match immediately would have been the courageous move. instead, they played it out for way, way too long.

and i know that the league knows they fucked up because they put this statement out this morning:

it's time to break down all of the things wrong with this bit of crisis comms:

1) when everyone is saying that you fucked up and failed to correctly interpret your own rules and also suggesting that you should change those protocols, you cannot double down and say "actually we did the right thing, according to the book." fuck the book!

2) the league has an unbelievably high profile example of being unable to "review and determine [their protocols]", as they created $5m settlement fund they created after being sued to hell in back over gender and sexual harassment claims THREE MONTHS AGO. i have no reason to believe this claim. i am not stupid.

3) why are the utah royals players and staff referenced before the angel city players, staff, and community? it happened to angel city at angel city. be better at writing.

though they'd never admit it, sports leagues rely heavily on the concept of the reality distortion field, a term coined by apple employee bud tribble in the 80s in reference to steve jobs' (and, in a post-iphone world, apple's) aura. inside of the field, nothing bad has ever happened. it is a version of reality that necessarily exists because important people are telling you it does. for apple, that field exists in big ways (the app store artificially being the only place to get apps for your phone) and little ways (blue vs green bubbles). the nfl didn't want you to know anything about cte. wwe's whole thing is about maintaining a reality distortion field outside of the one they show you on tv. the nba is a league that is about to be wholly supported by sports betting, but adam silver is going to be able to skate by because this year's playoffs have been the best in a decade and roundball rock is six months away from be played before the games again.

the nwsl's failure to act by immediately ending the match is egregious in any capacity but especially egregious because there have been two similar high profile medical emergencies in the last 5 years. in 2023, damar hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field after a tackle in a freak incident. he was resuscitated on the field, driven off in an ambulance, and the game was suspended. players and fans were sent home. the following day the nfl canceled the game entirely, an agreement that was made by the league office and the managerial staffs with both the bengals and the bills. in 2021, christian eriksen suffered cardiac arrest during a euros match against finland. this situation was almost exactly like the one i witnessed yesterday. uefa suspended that match basically immediately (after the referees and confederation consulted players and staff) and it was resumed later that evening. what happened yesterday was not new. there are established steps that leagues take in situations exactly like these. what jessica berman and the nwsl decided to do last night was to keep the match going to put the anguish of thousands of fans and dozens of players on ion in service of fulfilling a contractual obligation.

(both of these players actually ended up coming back and continuing their pro careers – modern medicine is incredible and there is a chance that savy's career is not over unless she wants it to be)

the league gets to be in a "cushy" position where they can simultaneously say "oh we did everything right" and make the change that everyone's asking for because it will (hopefully, christ) be a long time before the league will need to implement the protocol. jessica berman will appear on camera next week and launch "unwell fc," a "league supporters group" sponsored by the "wellness brand" from the woman who does the "call your daddy" podcast. she will be asked a shitty, softball question about last night's events where she'll say "we're working on updating our procedures" and we will be expected to forget what happened last night until savy returns to the sideline and even then it will be hand waved away.

the game yesterday had three (3) themes: mother's day, superhero night, and la rams day. i cannot imagine what savy's moms felt as they rushed from the field club down to the tunnel and accompany their daughter to the hospital. i cannot imagine what it was like for the medical staff to be asked to do the rarest but most important part of their job (save a life). i cannot imagine what it was like to be braden fiske, the rams dt (and the match's guest of honor), who watched three people dressed in rams jerseys miss a trivia question about him. i can't imagine what it was like to be the person inside of the gluey suit.

but we go again. the girls have a game on saturday and will be back at home on the 24th. i'll see my friends, cheer on my team, and cuss out the refs. the wheel turns, the cycle continues.

this is the way of american sports.

catch y'all next week.

-

niki