The marquee NWSL match of the season so far was supposed to be full of fireworks. The Kansas City Current were hosting the Orlando Pride on 16 August, last year’s champions and Shield winners visiting this year’s best team by a distance. The presence of two of the league’s best strikers, Orlando’s Barbra Banda and Kansas City’s Temwa Chawinga, created the expectation of goals. And it would have a rare national TV audience, with kickoff set for 3pm local time on CBS.
It turned into one of the most controversial moments in recent NWSL history. Due to extreme heat in Kansas City, kickoff was repeatedly delayed, eventually taking place nearly three and a half hours later than scheduled. The game itself, still played amid high temperatures, fizzled to a 0-0 draw. Banda exited due to an injury that was later revealed to be a rare trauma that will end her season. Per The Kansas City Star, at least 16 people were treated for heat-related injuries at CPKC Stadium and one person was transported to a hospital.
Afterward, Orlando head coach Seb Hines said things should have been handled differently, with both teams made to repeatedly come out into the heat and warm up before kickoff was delayed once again.
“It’s brutal,” Hines said. “A lot of confusion, and lack of communication as well, of what the next steps were. It was extremely hot. It was too hot to play. We would have liked that decision to have been made earlier on, before warm-up, so they can probably prep a little bit better.”
In the aftermath of that game, The Athletic reported that commissioner Jessica Berman denied a morning request from both clubs to delay the match given the high temperatures – the National Weather Service had issued a heat advisory for the area a couple days prior – concerned that delaying the game would mean losing the planned national broadcast slot on CBS. The report also stated the commissioner threatened Kansas City with a fine for the club’s handling of the delay once it happened.
The Guardian has found what may be one reason for the confusion Hines describes, and which might explain Berman’s threat to Kansas City. The NWSL quietly updated its publicly available 2025 Competition Rules and Regulations sometime after the game in Kansas City, in ways that might have directly affected the handling of the match.
The most significant change is the deletion of a clause saying what should happen if the temperature on the pitch was one degree below 92.3 degrees fahrenheit, the threshold which automatically triggers a match delay. In that event, the policy used to read, “it will be the fourth official in conjunction with the home club’s team physician with feedback from visiting team medical personnel, operations, officials and both technical staffs, to make the ultimate decision if and when play is allowed to resume.”
There currently is no such clause in the policy document as it is linked on the league’s rules and policies page.
When the temperature was read about 45 minutes after the scheduled start time in Kansas City, it read 91.8 degrees – just 0.5 degrees below the threshold. If the aforementioned clause in the then-publicly available policy meant that any temperature one degree or less below 92.3 degrees fahrenheit – and not just exactly one degree below the threshold – gave discretion to onsite officials, this reading was within that range. The Athletic reported, “sources at the stadium thought the drop in temperature was likely the result of a cloud passing overhead. They were confident that the temperature would rise again after the cloud passed.” Kansas City medical staff brought this concern to NWSL chief medical officer Dr Cindy Chang, who was involved throughout the delay and agreed that a second reading should be taken. After a second reading indeed showed a temperature of 95.6 degrees, which triggered another delay, Berman contacted the Kansas City owners and threatened to fine the club for breaking protocol.
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A league spokesperson told the Guardian, “In reviewing the document linked on the league’s website, it was noted that previous changes made in 2023 to the official policy utilized by clubs in day-to-day operations were not reflected in the publicly available version.”
The league did not respond to an inquiry about when the discrepancies were noted and corrected.
Meghann Burke, the executive director of the NWSL Players Association, told the Guardian that the organization was not aware that the language had been removed, and did not agree to its removal.
In the older document, all but one of the temperature thresholds were 92.3 degrees, which is consistent with the level negotiated by the Players Association in the 2024 collective bargaining agreement. The other temperature threshold mentioned is 95 degrees – likely a relic from the league and players’ first CBA agreed to in 2022, which had that as the threshold. Still, that the older version of the 2025 policy referred to a threshold of 92.3 degrees multiple times shows that the league had indeed changed much of that outward-facing policy at some point since the new CBA was ratified in 2024.
Another change of note between the old and new versions of the NWSL’s heat policy is the interval at which medical officials and referees are directed to take the temperature in the event of a delay. The older policy said that the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) should be taken every 30 minutes after the start of the delay, while the new policy halves that interval to 15 minutes. The league used the latter interval in Kansas City.
The only official media statement about the delay from the league was, “The league aims to play matches as scheduled whenever safely possible. While forecasts guide planning, we primarily rely on real-time, on-site weather data to make informed decisions in accordance with our inclement weather policies and protocols. Based on those inputs, the league made the decision to delay Saturday’s match.”
Neither the Kansas City Current or Orlando Pride responded to a request for comment regarding the edited policy.
The league has already been criticized for their handling of matters relevant to player health this year, most notable in Savy King’s collapse on the pitch in an Angel City v Utah Royals game on 9 May. In that incident, medical staff resuscitated her and brought her to a hospital, where she began what is expected to be a full recovery. The league did not end or postpone the match, with the Players Association soon condemning the decision to continue the game.
The week prior to the game in Kansas City, the Seattle Reign played at Providence Park in Portland, where manager Laura Harvey said multiple players got burns on their feet from the hot turf.