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How OL Reign responded to an ugly loss to get back on track

The first openly transgender player to score in the NWSL, a first brace for a six-year league veteran. OL Reign’s win against Angel City FC had it all.

Dantey Buitureida / SPP

After a devastating home loss to NJ/NY Gotham FC that prompted some soul searching, OL Reign roared back with a 4-1 win against Angel City on Saturday. It was a history-making game, as each goal contributed to an important first for the goalscorer and even the assists were record breaking. But it is all business and if anything was clear across the players it is that the team win was more important than any individual accolades.

The loss to Gotham sparked an important conversation within the Reign locker room.

“I said to the players after the game, you make a choice when things are going bad and you either dig in and you collectively try and solve it, or you focus on the things that we’ve not been doing well and forget what makes us great,” Reign manager Laura Harvey said. “I felt like we decided to decide we wanted to make ourselves great.”

Veronica Latsko echoed Harvey’s sentiments.

“Going into this game this week, we just kind of stripped it all back and went back to the basics and focused on what the foundation of the Reign is and that is how hard we work defensively,” Latsko said. “The first goal, I think everybody just had the mindset of, ‘We’re not losing this game’ and we just kept putting our foot on the gas,’ and I think that you guys could see that.”

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