Seattle’s playoff berth keeps Jess Fishlock’s final season going

Jess Fishlock’s last regular-season home match for Seattle Reign had been set months earlier. In April, the club announced that she would retire at the end of the 2026 season and that Nov. 1 would be her final regular-season home game. What wasn’t settled was whether Seattle’s season would end with that goodbye. The Reign’s announcement

The stakes were high, but Seattle’s route to the playoffs was specific: a win over Orlando guaranteed the final berth; another result would leave qualification dependent on North Carolina’s game against Denver. The Reign broke a scoreless tie in the 68th minute, when Bugg reacted first to a loose ball after a corner and scored. Orlando’s match report records the goal and Seattle’s 1-0 win. North Carolina beat Denver, so a draw would have let the Courage take the last spot, The Equalizer reported. Bugg’s finish decided both the match and the playoff race.

The farewell also offered a glimpse of the club’s longer history. The Equalizer reported that 16,095 fans attended at Lumen Field and gave Fishlock a large ovation as she left. It compared that crowd with 2,618 at the Reign’s first home game in Seattle, at Starfire Stadium in Tukwila. The figures come from different venues and occasions: a striking comparison, but not a like-for-like measure of audience growth.

Fishlock was Seattle’s last remaining original from the club’s inaugural 2013 squad. She missed a substantial stretch of this season through injury, but finished the regular season with four goals and an assist, according to the Reign’s account of her final home game. Coach Laura Harvey said the players wanted to win “for themselves, but they wanted to do it for her.” Fishlock said of her younger teammates, “they give me so much life and they give me so much joy,” and added that she wished she had more time to be part of their growth.

The club’s account points to Bugg, 20, as one of the younger players it sees as part of the team’s future. Her goal gave that idea a specific moment on Decision Day; it does not, by itself, prove a wider handoff from Fishlock to the next generation.

Seattle now travels to face Gotham, the Shield winner and top seed, in a quarterfinal scheduled for Nov. 8. The NWSL playoff schedule lists a single-elimination tournament, and Gotham’s regular-season finale report confirms the matchup. Seattle’s planned regular-season farewell has passed. Its season, and Fishlock’s final season with the club, continues into the playoffs.