The Seattle Reign play their first-ever NWSL home match in Spokane on Wednesday, when the Kansas City Current come to ONE Spokane Stadium for the first of three regular-season fixtures the club will play on the east side of the Cascades. Two more follow on Saturday, March 28, and April 4 — against Racing Louisville and Denver Summit FC, respectively — before the Reign return to Lumen Field in late April.
For people like me who grew up playing soccer in Eastern Washington, it's an exciting moment.
The soccer talent in this region has never been a secret, at least not to those of us who lived it. As a young girl growing up in Cashmere, a small town in Central Washington, the only club option available to girls like me was the Apple Valley Zephyr. There was one team, one age group, and we spent most weekends making early-morning drives to Seattle to find competition. The team only existed because a soccer fanatic named Dennis Tronson wanted to create opportunities for his daughters and, by extension, every other girl in the region who wanted to play. Tronson went on to become the Cashmere High School girls' soccer coach my freshman year, inheriting a program with a season-best 50% win rate. He spent 29 seasons leading the Cashmere girls soccer program, retiring last year with a 419-108-8 record, 22 league titles, and a spot in the Washington State Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
My freshman year, I remember Tronson telling me about this incredible player from the Tri-Cities, Hope Solo, who was dominating Washington state soccer as a forward but would eventually become a future goalkeeper for the U.S. Women's National Team. He sure was right about that prediction.
“I grew up here playing against some epic Eastern Washington teams,” Reign Chief Business Officer Maya Mendoza-Exstrom said in a Reign story about the team's journey to Spokane. “I played against Hope Solo, and her team had a number of youth national team players in it – as did all the other age groups around mine. It’s not often told, but Eastern Washington is a huge part of the Washington State soccer story.”
I eventually landed at Spokane Community College, where I played two seasons for a program that was, even then, building into something special. Our coach, Jim Martinson, was only in his second year when I arrived. He went on to spend 19 seasons leading the Sasquatch women's program, winning three NWAC Coach of the Year honors and compiling a 250-88-54 record. My teammates were primarily women from the greater Spokane area and northern Idaho — players who had grown up in the same pipeline I had, piecing together soccer careers in a region that didn't always make it easy. Several went on to play for Division I or other four-year college programs after leaving.
The women's soccer infrastructure in Eastern Washington has grown enormously since my playing days. Spokane Community College remains a powerhouse. Gonzaga produced Jodi Ülkekul, who played for the Reign and Spokane's new professional women's team, the Zephyr (great name!). Sophie Braun, another Gonzaga graduate, also represents the Zephyr and scored Argentina's first goal in the 2023 Women's World Cup. The girls who grew up dreaming about soccer east of the Cascades now have actual professional players to watch in their own city. Wednesday's match is the next step in that progression.
The Reign are in Spokane because Lumen Field is being converted to a grass surface to host matches at the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup this summer, and there wasn't a suitable alternative in the Seattle market. According to Equalizer Soccer, T-Mobile Park had scheduling conflicts with the Mariners, Husky Stadium presented its own logistical headaches given the UW campus's World Cup involvement and the need for field revisions, and neither Memorial Stadium (currently being reconstructed) nor Cheney Stadium in Tacoma were workable options. As Mendoza-Exstrom told The Equalizer, playing at Portland or a neutral site somewhere else on the West Coast was never really on the table. Staying in Washington was the priority.
ONE Spokane Stadium is a fraction of the size of what the Reign are used to, with roughly 5,000 seats, but the Sounders got a preview of what the venue can feel like when it's packed, playing their Concacaf Champions Cup second leg against the Vancouver Whitecaps there last Tuesday to a record crowd of 5,126. The atmosphere was intimate and loud.
Craig Waibel, the Sounders' General Manager and Chief Soccer Officer who grew up in the Spokane area, noted that both clubs wanted to demonstrate that they represent all of Washington. "We are Washington's teams. We're not willing to leave this state if we don't have to."
Reign General Manager Lesle Gallimore, who also made the trip to Spokane for the Sounders match, echoed that sentiment. Gallimore spent 26 seasons at the University of Washington and made countless trips to Spokane over that stretch. She acknowledged that selling three NWSL fixtures in Spokane is a different challenge than the appeal of a one-time rivalry match. "A Vancouver-Sounders Concacaf Cascadia match is a little bit easier of a sell," Gallimore said, but she also noted that was a reason to push harder to engage with the community and bring in fans. "Women's soccer, the Zephyr and Velocity of the Spokane group, has been phenomenal in their support of us, and we just want to collaborate with other soccer people in the state."
For anyone traveling from Seattle, there's a Reign Over Washington bus trip for the Saturday, March 28 match against Racing Louisville, and the Royal Guard are organizing carpools for their members for the April 4 match. The Reign have also partnered with several organizations, including Spokane Public Schools, which owns ONE Spokane Stadium, to reach out to community members about these matches. The RAVE Foundation — the official charitable arm of both the Reign and the Sounders — has already built eight mini-pitches east of the Cascades, including two in Spokane Valley. That investment is now opening direct pathways to the games: Spokane Valley is offering residents two free tickets through the RAVE Foundation partnership, and the Spokane County Library is offering 25% off tickets to its community members.
Waibel, reflecting on what these matches could mean for Eastern Washington fans, said, "I think at the end of three weeks, all of the players — men's and women's — are going to understand that this side of the state loves them too. And there's power in that."
The Reign's Spokane swing is ultimately a byproduct of World Cup planning, but the club wants to treat this as more than a scheduling workaround. As the Reign noted, the intent is to establish a genuine home-away-from-home presence in Spokane, not to show up once and move on. Mendoza-Exstrom floated the possibility of a future training camp or preseason game in the area, telling Equalizer Soccer that "this is not a one-and-done." For the girls and young women playing soccer across Eastern Washington right now, that kind of sustained investment would mean a lot. The region has been building toward this moment for a long time.
The first test begins Wednesday, and the Reign have a lot to prove to new fans in the region, as well as long-time fans who saw the team struggle the weekend prior against their rivals. Tickets for all three matches are available at the Reign's website.
