USL Super League Playoffs Semifinal | Saturday, May 23, 2026 | 7:00 p.m. ET / 6:00 p.m. CT Lexington SC Stadium | Lexington, KY Broadcast: Peacock
Cool, Calm, and collected. Thackeray’s Golden Girls were in high spirits as they prepared for Saturday in their final practice at The Hockaday School before leaving a day earlier than usual. Their final practice of the week is slated for Friday on Kentucky bluegrass.
The players were full of energy, and not a single one in the group appeared to be even the slightest bit nerved. They have been preparing for this moment week in and week out.
Dallas Trinity FC (11-10-7, 40 points) closed Wednesday’s training session with penalty kicks taken under simulated road conditions, staff and players lined up behind the net to jeer and rattle every shooter who stepped to the spot. The session before it was otherwise indistinguishable from any other Wednesday. Same energy. Same determination.
“It’s like just another game, and we have to go out and just enjoy the moment,” striker Allie Thornton said.
Dallas travels to face Lexington SC (14-3-11, 53 points) on Saturday night for a semifinal at Lexington SC Stadium against the Players’ Shield winners.
The Deadlock
Four matches. One Dallas win. One Lexington win. Two draws.
The regular-season series between these clubs is even. The teams played a fall fixture, then a spring rescheduled date eleven weeks later when weather pushed the original February match, then a Cotton Bowl date ten days after that, then nothing for two months.
Across those four ninety-minute windows, neither side could find a way to bury the other, and the two draws came on Cat Barry equalizers — a stoppage-time finish at the Cotton Bowl in March and another late goal in Kentucky.
Lexington opened the year on a league-record 16-match unbeaten run and finished it with the league’s best expected goal differential at +17.11. Barry scored 16 goals to break Thornton’s single-season record by three and became the first player in league history to record 20 goal contributions in a campaign. She was named the league’s Golden Boot winner on Tuesday. Goalkeeper Kat Asman picked up the Golden Glove the same day on a 0.86 goals-against average and 11 clean sheets.
Lexington was last in the league a year ago.
Dallas was on the receiving end of it when they were felled 6-0 early in the Fall, but The Golden Girls are the only club Lexington could not beat twice this season.
The Scouting Report
The number that matters most for Saturday are simple: Lexington is 11-0-3 when Barry scores and 3-3-8 when she does not.
She has scored against Dallas. She has also been kept off the score sheet in the matches Dallas won and drew without conceding to her. The pattern across four matches is that when Trinity locks her down, the Gals in Green find it hard to find a way through. When she gets free, the scoreboard lights up.
Amber Wisner has scouting on the Lexington midfield that no one else in the locker room does. Taylor Aylmer, Lexington’s captain and a former teammate of Wisner’s, is the player the captain singled out on Wednesday.
“She’s the best defensive midfielder in the league, honestly,” Wisner said. “She pulls the strings for them.”
Wisner is calm about Saturday in a way that betrays thirteen years of doing this. The captain, who reached 300 career matches last weekend, has been here before. She is not a player who needs a speech.
“Everyone that’s reached this level has played in championship matches. It’s inevitable, whether it’s at youth level or collegiate or other clubs. It’s the same game of soccer you’ve been playing since we were kids, 11 v 11.”
Recovery Report
Dallas Trinity FC
Wayny Balata (lower leg) is out. Lauren Flynn (lower leg) is out. Heather Stainbrook (lower leg) is out. Chioma Ubogagu (knee) is out. Caroline Swann (lower leg) is questionable.
Lexington SC
No injuries reported. Lexington is at full strength.
Dallas Players to Watch
Tyler McCamey — Top five in the league in saves on a half-season. Three clean sheets across her fifteen matches, including two of the last three. Thackeray called her positioning elite and singled out the deflection last weekend, the goalkeeper standing in the only spot the ball could end up. McCamey says she’s been studying penalty kick tendencies all week. “Remember, the pressure’s on them.”
Sealey Strawn — Five goals, including a brace in Saturday’s clincher. A third U19 call-up of the season arrived Thursday, this one for a Frankfurt camp that starts the day after the GSL Final. The 18-year-old from Prosper, Texas, has been getting on the ball in the spots Lexington tends to leave open between the lines. Strawn continues to shine at every opportunity this season, and the best is still yet to come from this young athlete. Strawn’s ceiling is massive, and last week’s breakout match was just the beginning.
Allie Thornton — The pressing engine and the team’s senior voice in the attacking third. A goal and an assist in the Fort Lauderdale win. Thornton is not chasing Asman as much as she is pretending Asman is not there. “I think it’s important that we focus on us and what we’re doing, and if we stay true to our game, we can do it.” A locked-in Thornton is a dangerous Thornton. Last season’s Golden Boot winner has been finding her form again as of late.
Sydney Cheesman — Signed out of LSU in March, made her professional debut against Sporting JAX, and is now starting matches in the double pivot. Saturday, she will be in the same patch of midfield as Aylmer for ninety minutes, and the duel between an experienced international and a two-month professional is one of the quieter battles that decides the night. Cheesman’s performance as a defensive midfielder has been great so far, but this could be her toughest test yet.
Lexington Players to Watch
Cat Barry — The new single-season scoring record holder. Her viral goal from midfield was just one of her many highlights this season. Barry is the game-changer. When she gets going, Lexington is unstoppable.
Kat Asman — Golden Glove winner. The only goalkeeper in the league who played every minute of the regular season and gave up fewer than a goal a game doing it. The Lauderdale back line was the worst in the league. Saturday is a different test for the Orlando Pride loanee.
Taylor Aylmer — Captain. The defensive midfielder Wisner called the best in the league. Everything Lexington builds funnels through her first, and everything Dallas wants to play through the middle has to find a way past her.
Allison Pantuso — Center back, started the win over Tampa Bay that clinched the Shield. The player Strawn and Thornton are most likely to be locked up with in the box, and the player who has to read Strawn’s runs between the lines. Her defensive prowess is one of the many reasons Asman was able to secure the Golden Glove.
The Other Semifinal
Sunday at Hodges Stadium, Sporting Club JAX hosts Carolina Ascent FC at 5 p.m. ET, also on Peacock, in a rematch seven days removed from Carolina’s 3-1 win in Charlotte that handed Lexington the Shield.
The Ascent comes in on a club-record six-match winning streak and an eleven-match unbeaten run that started in February. Jacksonville set the league’s single-season wins record in its inaugural campaign and has not forgotten last Sunday.
Winners meet in the final at the home of the higher seed next Saturday, May 30th.
What’s at Stake
Two clubs played four matches and could not separate. On the fifth one, only one of them gets to keep playing.
A Trinity win on the road sends the Golden Girls to a final next Saturday in either Charlotte or Jacksonville. A loss closes the second season at Fair Park.
The locker room is not pretending the moment isn’t big. It is choosing not to act like it.
PROJECTED DALLAS TRINITY FC LINEUP (4-2-3-1): Tyler McCamey; Cyera Hintzen, Maya McCutcheon, Hannah Davison, Samar Guidry; Amber Wisner (C), Sydney Cheesman; Camryn Lancaster, Sealey Strawn, Jasmine Hamid; Allie Thornton
PROJECTED LEXINGTON SC LINEUP (4-2-3-1): Kat Asman; Ally Brown, Allison Pantuso, Regan Steigleder, Alyssa Bourgeois; Taylor Aylmer (C), Darya Rajaee; McKenzie Weinert, Addie McCain, Sarah Griffith; Catherine Barry