Reign Avert Complete Disaster, Draw With Lowly Bay FC

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Seattle Reign midfielder Jess Fishlock celebrates her equalizing goal during an NWSL match against Bay FC on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025 at Lumen Field in Seattle, Wash. (Emma Ottosen / Reign FC Communications) [/caption]

SEATTLE, Wash. - It was the type of game last year's 13th-place Seattle Reign would have dropped.

Trailing 1-0 late thanks to a mistake of a conceded goal, this year's No. 5 Reign (9-8-7) continued to fight to keep their Friday-night game with No. 13 Bay FC (4-12-8) in reach. As the game looked lost, veteran Jess Fishlock slammed in a putback goal to tie it up in the 84th minute, leaving open the possibility of Seattle clinching a playoff spot with a North Carolina loss and a Houston draw/loss later this weekend.

Still, it wasn’t an ideal result as Seattle squandered chances to put the game away and potentially move up into the NWSL’s third seed.

What happened?

Underperforming Offense Meets Opportunistic Defense

Reign head coach Laura Harvey remarked in the days leading up to the game that a team eliminated from playoff contention can be dangerous, because they're playing for pride.

That energy came through early, as Bay striker Racheal Kundananji found herself around the goal often while Bay FC worked to put six shots up in the first half.

Seattle, a defense with the best goals-allowed-to-xG-allowed ratio in the NWSL, showed their resilience, though. Phoebe McClernon disrupted passing lanes consistently in the early going, blocking shots to keep goalie Claudia Dickey clean.

Despite their best efforts to stop chances that came through, the Reign looked like they would need to turn to their ailing offense to help counteract an inevitable Bay FC goal.

Seattle Offense Flips Its Script In a Bad Way

This is a Reign squad that came into Friday’s game with the lowest xG total in the league, but was outperforming that lowly mark of 21.5 with 26 scores. In short, this was a Seattle offense that struggled to generate chances, but was among the best in the league at converting opportunities when they presented themselves.

The exact opposite showed in the first half of Friday's action.

The Reign devastated Bay FC with three shots on target to the tune of 0.8 xG through a variety of methods. Maddie Dahlien leveraged a solid spin move into a saved shot on goal while Ainsley McCammon and Nérilia Mondésir both missed decent looks by inches and Seattle was suddenly staring at a high xG figure with nothing to show.

Leading scorer Emeri Adames even worked to her left for a decent look in the late first half, but shot it straight at Bay FC keeper Jordan Silkowitz to give you an idea of how things went for this offense early.

Bugg's Costly Mistake

As the first half came to a close, the Reign tried to work the ball out of their third. Young defender Jordyn Bugg played a slow, overly optimistic ball through two Bay defenders, but defender Caprice Dydasco went the other way with it.

With the rest of the Seattle backline trying to break the Bay FC press and out of position upfield, it became a simple two-player game between Kundananji and Taylor Huff, the latter of whom slammed a cross past Dickey for a devastating opening score in the 31st minute.

Fishlock Refuses to Go Down

The teams scrapped through the second half, but neither was able to generate the looks they had in the first half as Bay FC tried to lock their end down to hold out for an upset win.

As she's done so many times this season, veteran midfielder Jess Fishlock came in in the 63rd with the chance to swing the outcome.

Maddie Mercado, fresh from a recalled loan and playing in her first action for Seattle since June, worked in the box and was picked off before she could get a shot off. But in that moment, if someone had been running parallel to Mercado, Seattle would have had an open look at the net off the loose ball.

With numbers pushing the issue for Seattle in the 84th, the experienced Fishlock patiently followed the play this time and watched as Dahlien played a ball into the box for a newly subbed-on Mia Fishel. Fishel couldn't make proper contact as the ball was weakly cleared, just as it had been on the Mercado play.

But Fishlock found herself at the right place, slamming the equalizer in as Bay FC was still reeling from the previous attempt.

After a lengthy stoppage time yielded no big chances, Seattle escaped with the draw.

Takeaways: At Least They Got Points

While the battle the Reign showed late was admirable, this was a clear missed opportunity to leap into the No. 3 seed with a win against a mediocre squad. But as Harvey insisted in the lead-up to this game, a team playing for pride and pride only, like Bay FC, is dangerous, and they generated plenty of chances with that energy.

Bay FC worked to over 1.1 xG in this game, thanks to 12 shots, and did most of its damage in the early going against a Seattle defense that was playing too wide by Harvey's accounts. When Bugg turned the ball over, it was lights out for Seattle because of how spread defenders like Huerta and Madison Curry were. Add to the fact that the Reign practiced once together since playing in New Jersey on Sunday, and you get a squad that didn't play up to its standard in terms of pressing opponents consistently.

Individual performances from Huerta and McClernon, the latter of whom ended Bay's opportunities singlehandedly as she continues to string together good games, kept the Reign afloat. It's heartening to see Seattle get some points on a bleak night, though, and that's the sentiment Harvey wanted to focus on postgame.

"We didn't play well … but one thing I said to the group at the end is, we've got something you can't coach, which is a mentality that we're not going to give up and we're not going to stop fighting," Harvey said. "We're always going to believe we can get back into games."

To that effect, Harvey was impressed by Bugg's ability to keep her head in the game to maintain a one-goal deficit.

Seattle's offense had chances to make the one conceded goal an afterthought, though, but just lacked the touch. Young scorers Dahlien and Adames generated nearly 0.5 xG combined, while Ainsley McCammon just barely missed a follow-up shot on a Dahlien miss to tie it up in the first half.

Though Fishlock was happy to score the key goal, she remarked that games like this, which feature plenty of chances (1.78 xG, to be exact) to score, are good for the young team.

"We have all the pieces, it's just about kind of keeping on building on the relationships the best we can," Fishlock said. "The decision-making and execution in the final third is always going to be the last thing that comes … we're getting there."

Indeed, it's not a stretch to think Fishel will be able to finish the opportunity that she had before Fishlock's follow given more reps with her new team.

While it's clear that the Reign, chock-full of attackers with only a few NWSL seasons played, are progressing, time is a factor. Seattle has just two regular-season matches to solidify a solid seed before a likely playoff run. It'll have to make due with what it has on hand offensively when that time comes, and it doesn’t look great at the moment with just four goals in its last seven games.

Up Next

Speaking of the postseason, the Reign still have a hand in their seeding fate going forward. Seattle will host another team out of the playoff hunt next Friday in the No. 12 Utah Royals, hoping to get all three points in a game they will be favored in again.