NWSL says game should not have continued after Savy King collapsed on the field
A game between Angel City and the Utah Royals should not have continued after Savy King collapsed on the field and had to be hospitalized, the National Women's Soccer League said Friday.
The league said it came to the conclusion after reviewing its protocols and listening to feedback from stakeholders. There were persistent questions this week about the league's procedures.
A league statement expressed regret for allowing last Friday's match in Los Angeles to go on after the 20-year-old Angel City defender was carted off the field while shaken players and fans looked on.
"The health and well being of the entire NWSL community remains our top priority, and in any similar situation going forward the game should and would be abandoned," said the statement.
King underwent surgery on Tuesday after doctors discovered a heart abnormality. The team announced she is recovering and her prognosis is good.
WATCH | Jonathan David transfer buzz and NSL week 4 breakdown:
Jonathan David transfer buzz and NSL week 4 breakdown
3 days ago
Duration 13:40
Andi Petrillo is joined by analyst Amy Walsh and Halifax Tides FC's Marika Guay to break down Canadian soccer's biggest headlines, including this week's NSL top moment.
The NWSL Players Association was among those that said the match should have been suspended after King's collapse in the 74th minute. The players' union issued a statement Friday saying it was grateful the league listened to the concerns.
"The league's acknowledgement that the game should have ended — and its commitment to adopting this protocol for the future, should it ever be needed — represents a meaningful step forward," the NWSLPA said. "It's a change made possible by the strength and unity of our players. Player safety is not a slogan. It is a practice."
The NWSL said earlier this week that it was reviewing its protocols. The league ultimately makes the decision when it comes to suspending, canceling or postponing games.
NWSL rules for 2025 state that the league "recognizes that emergencies may arise which make the start or progression of a Game inadvisable or dangerous for participants and spectators. Certain event categories automatically trigger the League Office into an evaluation of whether delay or postponement is necessary."
King was the second-overall pick in the 2024 NWSL draft by expansion Bay FC and played 18 games for the club. She was traded to Angel City in February and had started in all eight games for the team this season.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
'Both teams are at the top of their game': Hockey analyst after Panthers even series in Game 2
Watch The Hockey News analyst Tony Ferrari discusses the performance of Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.
National Post
4 hours ago
- National Post
Some tough times for some big names in growing PWHL
Until this past week, the majority of the best players in women's hockey have been shielded from the dirtier side of the business side of professional sports and how that could impact their day-to-day lives. Article content An expansion process focused on maintaining league-wide parity ended that shielding once and for all. Article content Article content And kudos to the women — the likes of Hilary Knight, Sarah Nurse, Alex Carpenter and Emerance Maschmeyer to name just four — who handled this all with so much grace. Article content It can't have been easy for hockey players who all their lives have been told they are at the very elite level of their sport, to suddenly hear from the general managers of the teams they helped form that there were three other players they would rather protect going forward. Article content All four of the aforementioned players were foundational signings — the three players on each of the six original clubs that the teams would be build around — and two years later all four, one of them a captain, were left unprotected. Article content Then put the shoe on the other foot and imagine being the GM told they can protect just three players and having to weigh factors such as age, financial flexibility and long-term goals to say nothing of the personal relationships built over two years and some longer than that, and then having to approach a player who has probably never been cut from a team and tell them they would not be protected. Article content But that was the hand dealt both GMs and many of the league's biggest stars over the past few weeks. Article content Article content Soft — read wildly popular — landing spots in Seattle and Vancouver helped cushion the blow for the players, but that didn't stop it from being a roller coaster ride these past few weeks for some of the most highly respected women in the game. Article content Article content Nurse was as much the face of the Sceptres franchise as anyone on the team. She was one of three foundational signings along with defender Renata Fast and eventual team captain Blayre Turnbull. She was part of the marketing campaign that introduced the PWHL to Toronto. She was even part of the Player's Association Executive that helped negotiate the collective bargaining agreement this league will play under for another six seasons yet.
CTV News
5 hours ago
- CTV News
A $2.8 billion settlement will change college sports forever. Here's how
A U.S. federal judge has approved terms of a sprawling US$2.8 billion antitrust settlement that will upend the way college sports have been run for more than a century. In short, schools can now directly pay players through licensing deals — a concept that goes against the foundation of amateurism that college sports was built upon. Some questions and answers about this monumental change for college athletics: Q: What is the House settlement and why does it matter? A: Grant House is a former Arizona State swimmer who sued the defendants (the NCAA and the five biggest athletic conferences in the nation). His lawsuit and two others were combined and over several years the dispute wound up with the settlement that ends a decades-old prohibition on schools cutting checks directly to athletes. Now, each school will be able to make payments to athletes for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). For reference, there are nearly 200,000 athletes and 350 schools in Division I alone and 500,000 and 1,100 schools across the entire NCAA. Q: How much will the schools pay the athletes and where will the money come from? A: In Year 1, each school can share up to about $20.5 million with their athletes, a number that represents 22 per cent of their revenue from things like media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships. Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne famously told Congress 'those are resources and revenues that don't exist.' Some of the money will come via ever-growing TV rights packages, especially for the College Football Playoff. But some schools are increasing costs to fans through 'talent fees,' concession price hikes and 'athletic fees' added to tuition costs. Q: What about scholarships? Wasn't that like paying the athletes? A: Scholarships and 'cost of attendance' have always been part of the deal for many Division I athletes and there is certainly value to that, especially if athletes get their degree. The NCAA says its member schools hand out nearly $4 billion in athletic scholarships every year. But athletes have long argued that it was hardly enough to compensate them for the millions in revenue they helped produce for the schools, which went to a lot of places, including multimillion-dollar coaches' salaries. They took those arguments to court and won. Q: Haven't players been getting paid for a while now? A: Yes, since 2021. Facing losses in court and a growing number of state laws targeting its amateurism policies, the NCAA cleared the way for athletes to receive NIL money from third parties, including so-called donor-backed collectives that support various schools. Under House, the school can pay that money directly to athletes and the collectives are still in the game. Q: But will $20.5 million cover all the costs for the athletes? A: Probably not. But under terms of the settlement, third parties are still allowed to cut deals with the players. Some call it a workaround, but most simply view this as the new reality in college sports as schools battle to land top talent and then keep them on campus. Top quarterbacks are reportedly getting paid around $2 million a year, which would eat up about 10 per cent of a typical school's NIL budget for all its athletes. Q: Are there any rules or is it a free-for-all? A: The defendant conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12) are creating an enforcement arm that is essentially taking over for the NCAA, which used to police recruiting violations and the like. Among this new entity's biggest functions is to analyze third-party deals worth $600 or more to make sure they are paying players an appropriate 'market value' for the services being provided. The so-called College Sports Commission promises to be quicker and more efficient than the NCAA. Schools are being asked to sign a contract saying they will abide by the rules of this new structure, even if it means going against laws passed in their individual states. Q: What about players who played before NIL was allowed? A: A key component of the settlement is the $2.7 billion in back pay going to athletes who competed between 2016-24 and were either fully or partially shut out from those payments under previous NCAA rules. That money will come from the NCAA and its conferences (but really from the schools, who will receive lower-than-normal payouts from things like March Madness). Q: Who will get most of the money? A: Since football and men's basketball are the primary revenue drivers at most schools, and that money helps fund all the other sports, it stands to reason that the football and basketball players will get most of the money. But that is one of the most difficult calculations for the schools to make. There could be Title IX equity concerns as well. Q: What about all the swimmers, gymnasts and other Olympic sports athletes? A: The settlement calls for roster limits that will reduce the number of players on all teams while making all of those players – not just a portion – eligible for full scholarships. This figures to have an outsize impact on Olympic-sport athletes, whose scholarships cost as much as that of a football player but whose sports don't produce revenue. There are concerns that the pipeline of college talent for Team USA will take a hit. Q: So, once this is finished, all of college sports' problems are solved, right? A: The new enforcement arm seems ripe for litigation. There are also the issues of collective bargaining and whether athletes should flat-out be considered employees, a notion the NCAA and schools are generally not interested in, despite Tennessee athletic director Danny White's suggestion that collective bargaining is a potential solution to a lot of headaches. NCAA President Charlie Baker has been pushing Congress for a limited antitrust exemption that would protect college sports from another series of lawsuits but so far nothing has emerged from Capitol Hill. Eddie Pells, The Associated Press
