NWSL Week 12 in review: Tiny pitch woes in Western NY

This weekend was a big one.

It was the weekend of Washington’s second straight shutout, a win over the Red Stars both giving the Spirit some breathing room and closing the gap. The weekend where Chicago’s slide continued, the Red Stars held scoreless for a third consecutive game, a strong start to the season now giving way to 270 minutes without a goal.

It was the weekend where Boston saw a long-awaited win turn into another loss in the span of four minutes. Where Orlando’s Kristen Edmonds scored twice to bring her team level on points with Chicago, the Pride now on the brink of cracking the top four.

It was the weekend where Seattle, finally looking like its former self and on the brink of breaking into the top four, was dealt another blow, goalkeeper Haley Kopmeyer stretched off the field after an apparent non-contact injury. Where amateur call-up Andi Tostanoski was suddenly called into action, the undrafted rookie who made the team after an invitation to the Reign’s preseason camp making seven huge saves in her pro debut. The weekend where it wasn’t enough. It was the weekend where Western NY got another big win, putting the top of the table just two points away.

A weekend of huge results and heartbreaking losses, of big performances and gaps closing, of some streaks finally broken and others extended. It was the weekend of all those things, and yet none of them are what we’re talking about. Instead, we go back to that old saying, the one passed down from generation to generation: For it is the smallest fields that cast the largest shadows.

Because more than anything else, this was the weekend where a game - an actual, real professional game, one that counted in the standings and everything - was played on a field roughly the size of a pool table, because of a scheduling conflict that involved a TLC (TC? TLC-L?) concert.

Wait, what was that last one?

It made for some hilarious jokes and the league quietly edited the image to deemphasize the furt part. This new version is still the header image on all of the NWSL’s social media pages, as well as the league YouTube account.

All of these, while definitely missteps, were relatively minor. Furt made for a very funny week on WoSo Twitter, the ill-timing of the Championship game announcement gave way to a pretty great final at Providence Park. No one got hurt, and the league, at least in the last two cases, learned from theses mistakes, removing an embarrassing non-word, making sure to make the announcement that this season’s championship would be at Houston’s BBVA Compass Stadium at the beginning of the season (tickets for that game, which will take place on Oct. 9, went on sale on Monday). Soon enough we’ll see if they’ve gotten a handle on how to handle the return of the USWNT players - this time from the Olympics - too.

But what happened this weekend, that the Flash and the Reign played a game on a field that was crammed into the outfield of a minor league baseball stadium and measured 100 yards by 58 yards., was a whole other level of misstep.

At first, it did seem funny. When Western NY’s stream first came online, when the first pictures appeared, there were plenty of jokes to be made. Was it a foosball table? A shuffleboard court? A bowling lane? Maybe they’d play some small-sided games. Perhaps the Flash had finally just found a field that was compatible with the 1980s camcorders they seem to be regularly using to broadcast their stream.

But that silliness soon gave way to something else. Most of the time, it’s easy to feel like we’re in our own little bubble. These games aren’t on TV, meaning anyone who’s watching them online is either the victim of a very strange hostage situation, deep into a YouTube hole that started innocently five hours ago with a search for the “MMMbop” video, or there on purpose.

Except that we aren’t in our own little bubble. Not completely. Other people are checking in, whether out of a genuine curiosity or - if you’re a cynic (hello, friend) - to see if the thing’s on fire yet. And anyone who checked in on Saturday night? The thing was at five alarms.

Seattle head coach Laura Harvey tweeted her side of the whole fiasco on Saturday night, writing that the Reign were initially told they’d be playing on a field that was “suitable, but slightly smaller than regulation” at 110 by 61 yards. Harvey continued, “today we find out at 1:30 p.m. the dimensions are 100 x 58. At 1:30 p.m. we received an email from the officials that they deemed the field unsuitable if certain aspects of the field were not changed.” Then Harvey revealed what is one of the most incredible parts of this. “At 5 p.m. they did another inspection in which they told me specifically that the field had not changed from 1:30 p.m., but now they deemed it suitable!”

Harvey, as well as several players, both from the Reign as well as other teams, were rightfully upset, as were fans. More than that though, other people, ones outside this little bubble, started to notice. Perhaps it was that some of the most famous players - Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Christine Sinclair, Abby Wambach and a person whose tweets I have to log out of Twitter to see, Carli Lloyd - were all tweeting about it. And perhaps, too, it’s that we don’t live in as much of a bubble as we think, or as we once did.

Almost immediately after the game, NWSL Commissioner Jeff Plush issued a statement. It read, in full:

Plush’s statement, while respectable in that the league was quick to acknowledge the error, also rings a little hollow. The league clearly knew that the field wasn’t one that was appropriate for a professional game, and yet let it take place, apologizing only after - or maybe because - people were upset about it, and because the whole episode started to get a lot of mainstream media coverage. “A tree fell in the forest? Oh, we didn’t realize you were standing there behind that other tree and heard it. We didn’t think it would make a sound.”

Soccer is already a hard sell, women’s soccer even harder. Women’s soccer without some of its biggest stars, and during a time of year that’s also packed with the other 1,000 things that consume our summer weekends is pretty impossible. So why make it harder? The league, the players, the coaches and the fans will all move on from this, because there’s still next week, because no one’s run away with the title yet, because first and seventh are separated by just 10 points, because we have to.

But we also shouldn’t have to move on from it, because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. This wasn’t just another misstep, a hilarious graphic design choice or an ill-timed press release. This was an embarrassment, and in a world where so many people are already watching - and waiting - for this league to go the way of the two others before it, a completely unnecessary one. In the words of the (apparently) immortal TLC: “Don’t go chasing alternative venues, please stick to the fields that you’re used to.”