S1: The RSL Story. Ep 1: The Unraveling
Spencer Warne and Lauren Beck couldn’t wait to get to work the night of Aug. 26, 2000.
The pair was part of a local ESPN radio team that broadcast every Real Salt Lake home game. But in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down nearly every aspect of life, including sports.
But on Wednesday, Aug. 26, not only was Real Salt Lake returning to it’s Sandy stadium for the first time in five months, the match was the first time any Major League Soccer team had invited fans to watch from the stadium.
They got to the stadium two hours early and the anticipation was palpable.
“I took a little video of myself lugging in our equipment for the broadcast, saying ‘I’m so happy to be back, but I did not miss dragging this equipment into the stadium’,” Beck said. “It was the first time we were back in the stadium.”
Warne said they were up in the broadcast booth, windows open listening to the music blare.
“Watching it build up and watching kids be excited,” he said. “And watching the supporters groups wandering around the stadium with the drums and the smoke and the flags. And that’s RSL’s culture.”
They were busy setting up when they started to hear rumors that they might not get to cover a match that night.
“We started to get whispers that maybe this game isn’t happening,” Beck said. “I have a video of the players coming out and kind of congregating on the field. And in the video, you can hear me and my broadcast partner, Spencer Warne talking. And I say is this official? Cuz it seems pretty official?”
Then she turned to Warne and said, “They’re all out here wearing black lives matter shirts. I don’t think this game is going to happen.”
Warne remembers hearing a message over the stadium’s intercom system.
“And that’s when they announced that it wasn’t going to be going ahead,” Warne said.
Warne and Beck realized, as other sports reporters did, that they were no longer covering a sports story. Instead, they found themselves covering an unprecedented moment.
That’s the day U.S. athletes – starting with the WNBA and NBA players – refused to play. It was an act of protest prompted when a Black Man named Jacob Blake was shot during a confrontation with police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23.
This was a first in American sports history.
If games are scheduled, teams and leagues do everything they can to play them, especially when fans are involved. The only other time U.S. teams and athletes didn’t play scheduled games en masse was after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And that time, it was team owners and league officials making the call.
Real Salt Lake defender Nedum Onuoha said the players saw what was happening across the country and decided to join the protest. Instead of squaring off against LAFC, the two teams met on the pitch in Black Lives Matter t-shirts and posed for a picture before calling it a day.
“So the whole sporting nation is now at a point where you’re thinking, ‘Well, do you stand with them? Or do you stand against them?’” Onuoha said.
He told the local broadcast crew that they hoped their action would send a message that was long overdue.
“The aim is for this to be a very big statement,” Onuoha said. “This is solidarity, not just within the NBA, this is solidarity within the sports world. This is solidarity for me as a black male, towards people who maybe are suffering from injustice in this country. So like I say, what happens on the weekend I’m not sure about but we’re living in this moment. Now we’re trying to make as big an impact as possible.”
There was disappointment that the game was canceled, but Beck and Warne said they also understood this moment was about more than games.
“It was really impactful to be there in person and see these players take that stand,” Beck said, “because will we ever see something like that again? Probably not. Or at least not for a long time.”
Warne added, “There was disappointment inside me personally, because I was excited to be there. I’m always excited to be there and watch soccer. But it was much, much bigger than soccer at that time…and I think the RSL fan base is knowledgeable enough and smart enough to support where it’s right. And get on board with things when it’s right.”
But there were some who were not ‘on board’ – including the team’s owner, Dell Loy Hansen. And what he chose to do became a match that lit a fire that nearly consumed the club he’d once saved. The full story can be heard in episode 1.
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Making of a Moment: The RSL Story is a new podcast from KSL that explores what these iconic sports moments mean to us.
This podcast takes a look at the improbably playoff run in 2021, and how understanding what led to that moment might just change what these moments mean to us.
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