USL Super League | Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 7:30 p.m. CT Cotton Bowl Stadium | Dallas, TX
Broadcast: KFAA, WFAA+, Peacock, TUDN Radio
Dallas Trinity FC (10-10-7, 37 points) closes the regular season Saturday night at the Cotton Bowl against Fort Lauderdale United FC (5-13-8, 23 points) in the final match of the season, and it all comes down to this one.
This will be the final home game in the career of Trinity’s amazing captain, Amber Wisner.
Dallas holds fourth place by a single point over fifth-place Spokane Zephyr FC, who host Brooklyn FC in the afternoon at 3:00 pm CT. By the time Nathan Thackeray hands in his lineup sheet, the entire scenario will have clarity. A win clinches Dallas’s second straight playoff berth regardless of what happens in Spokane. A draw clinches it as long as Spokane does not take three points off Brooklyn. A loss combined with a Spokane win ends the season.
The simpler version: win the match, and Dallas is in. That is the only path that does not require help.
How Trinity Got Here
This was not the second season anybody at Fair Park had drawn up. Pauline MacDonald was let go last summer, and Chris Petrucelli ran the touchline through the fall while also running the front office as general manager.
The Golden Girls drifted into the winter break in fourth at 6-5-2 with 20 points and a roster that needed addressing. Petrucelli addressed it with three winter signings before the new head coach had even been hired: Free agents Lauren Flynn & Tyler McCamey both arrived with NWSL experience, while Heather Stainbrook was brought in on loan from Washington Spirit as a creative engine in midfield.
Thackeray was introduced as the second head coach in club history on January 22 at The Hockaday School with eight seasons at the North Carolina Courage behind him and a phrase he has not let go of since: evolution, not revolution. Bethany Bos, nee Balcer, signed from the NWSL in the weeks after Thackeray arrived, the first addition the new coach officially got to weigh in on.
The spring has been one long argument with the scoreboard. Carolina scored in the 89th to steal a point in March, Brooklyn equalized in the 85th in one match and in the 90th in the next, and DC found one in the 79th to end the fourth Trinity lead Dallas had failed to convert into three points in eight matches.
Jasmine Hamid arrived from Fort Lauderdale two months ago with thirteen career regular-season goals and has not yet scored one in Dallas, the acquisition that was supposed to unlock the front line and so far has done anything but.
Thackeray’s record reads 4-5-5 across his fourteen matches in charge, with the front line rearranged five different ways, the back four and midfield spent most of the spring as a work in progress, as both groups have been plagued with injuries; Wayny Balata has been out since matchweek 27, Stainbrook has been gone since late April, and Flynn was unavailable for the DC trip, the trip to Tampa, and Saturday.
Sydney Cheesman signed out of LSU in March, made her professional debut against Sporting JAX, and is now starting matches.
Through all of it, Dallas has held fourth place. The only constant has been The Captain, Amber Wisner, who has played every single minute.
Last Saturday in Tampa, Samar Guidry scored 92 seconds in, the fastest goal in club history. Camryn Lancaster doubled the lead in the 27th off a Sealey Strawn through ball. McCamey kept the clean sheet. Spokane beat DC 1-0 the same night and stayed one point back, where the Zephyr have been every week for two months.
The all-time series with Fort Lauderdale sits 3-3-2 across the two clubs’ brief shared history. Dallas won 4-0 at Beyond Bancard Field on February 7 in what is still Thackeray’s most complete performance as head coach. Fort Lauderdale beat Dallas 2-1 at the Cotton Bowl in the fall.
Recovery Report
Dallas Trinity FC
Wayny Balata (lower leg) is out.
Lauren Flynn (lower leg) is out.
Heather Stainbrook (lower leg) is out.
Fort Lauderdale United FC
Molly McDougal (D) is out.
Shea Moyer (M) is out.
Emily Thompson (F) is out.
Lilly McCarthy (M) is out.
Julia Grosso (D, season-ending) is out.
The Bigger Picture
Spokane plays at 3:00 pm CT. Dallas plays at 7:30 p.m. CT. Whatever the Zephyr does against Brooklyn will be known before Thackeray’s side takes the field, which makes Saturday the cleanest scenario Dallas has faced in two months.
A Spokane loss to Brooklyn makes the rest a formality. Dallas could lose at Fair Park and still finish fourth.
A Spokane draw leaves Dallas needing anything but a defeat to take 4th.
A Spokane win moves them to 39 points and forces Dallas to win against Fort Lauderdale to hold the spot.
The playoff matchup waits on Saturday’s results across the league. Sporting JAX hosts Carolina at the same time Dallas hosts Fort Lauderdale, with the Players’ Shield on the line, and Lexington plays Tampa earlier in the day.
If Trinity advances, they will travel to either Jacksonville or Lexington next weekend, depending on how the top of the table settles.
Dallas Trinity
Thackeray is expected to roll out last week’s lineup after the win in Tampa. McCamey in goal. Cyera Hintzen and Guidry at fullback, with Maya McCutcheon and Hannah Davison in the middle. Wisner captaining the double pivot alongside Cheesman. Lancaster, Strawn, and Hamid behind Allie Thornton up top.
Dallas is the only team in the Super League without a goalscorer in the top 25 in the league. Strawn, Thornton, & Wisner are tied at three goals apiece, with Lancaster’s strike at Tampa moving her ahead of the group with four. Fort Lauderdale has conceded 49 goals in 28 matches. The opportunity to add to the spring scoring numbers is sitting there.
edited 5/16/25: my count of Lancaster’s goals was incorrect, she has four, not three. Thanks, Dave!
The Fair Park faithful are craving a big win to end the regular season.
Amber Wisner — The captain enters Saturday on 2,430 minutes this season and will become the first player in Super League history to log 5,000 career regular-season minutes during the match. Her presence on the field has been the only constant throughout the season under both Petrucelli & Thackeray. Her four Team of the Month recognitions this year — September, February, March, April — outnumber the rest of the Trinity roster combined. Saturday is the last time she walks off the Cotton Bowl pitch.
Tyler McCamey — Forty-eight saves on the season across 14 matches. Five at Tampa last weekend. Four against DC the week before. McCamey has quietly been the reason Dallas is still in fourth place, and the Lauderdale attack with Allie Long pulling strings in midfield is going to test her. The keeper has put together two personal clean sheets in the last three matches.
Cam Lancaster – The 23-year-old assisted Guidry’s goal in the second minute last week, and 25 minutes later, she took a defender on 1 on 1 and doubled the lead. Lancaster’s growth this season has been fun to watch, and she continues to improve every week. If she can carry over her performance from last week, she could be the key to Dallas’ attack.
Fort Lauderdale United FC
Paul Jennison‘s side is ninth on 23 points, eliminated weeks ago, and on a four-match losing streak. Jennison was named head coach on February 11, hours after Ali Rogers was let go. Rogers had taken the job in September after Tyrone Mears moved upstairs to be President of Soccer. Two head coaches in nine months has not produced the consistency the front office wanted.
The April signing of Allie Long, a 2019 World Cup winner who had been retired in everything but the announcement for five years, was supposed to be the move that turned the spring around. Long debuted on May 2 against Tampa. Captain Sh’nia Gordon scored. Fort Lauderdale lost 2-1 anyway. They have lost the three since.
The injury list cost Jennison five names on Saturday, including the central midfielder and the wide forward who started against Carolina last weekend. Long is the obvious fit alongside Laveni Vaka in the double pivot. Felicia Knox is the likeliest candidate to take Thompson’s wing spot. The back four should run Gordon, Kelli Van Treeck, Margot Mace, and Abigail Hugh in front of Haley Craig in goal. Kiara Locklear leads the line.
Allie Long — A 2019 World Cup winner playing her fourth Super League match. Long anchors the Lauderdale midfield now and dictates the tempo of whatever they manage to build on the road. How Wisner and Cheesman handle her on the ball decides most of what happens in transition.
Kiara Locklear — April Team of the Month and the only consistent threat in the Lauderdale attack. Locklear scored at Spokane in late April and has been Lauderdale’s most reliable goalscorer through the spring. McCutcheon and Davison will be tracking her in transition all evening.
Sh’nia Gordon — Captain, central defender, and the player who scored Lauderdale’s last goal against Tampa on May 2. With McDougal and Grosso both out, Gordon will run the back four through a long night on the road, and is the player Strawn and Thornton are most likely to find themselves engaged with in the box.
What’s at Stake
Saturday is the regular season finale, the last home match of Amber Wisner’s career, Fan Appreciation Night, and 90 minutes against a Lauderdale side that has lost four straight. A win clinches a second straight playoff berth and a semifinal trip to either Sporting JAX or Lexington next weekend.
A loss combined with a Spokane win ends the season for everyone in the room — Wisner included — and frames an offseason that was supposed to be about building on a playoff appearance into one about explaining how it slipped away in front of the home crowd in May.
The Cotton Bowl has not been the venue Dallas wanted it to be in 2025-26. The home record is 5-2-7. Tampa Bay won there in March on two shots on target. Spokane drew there in early April. Sporting JAX drew there in March. Saturday they have to be the home team that closes out the matches it has to close out.
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 FORT LAUDERDALE UNITED FC LINEUP (4-2-3-1): Haley Craig; Sh’nia Gordon (C), Kelli Van Treeck, Margot Mace, Abigail Hugh; Laveni Vaka, Allie Long; Kate Colvin, Taylor Smith, Felicia Knox; Kiara Locklear
Camryn Lancaster has four goals on the season, the goal in Tampa putting her one ahead of Thronton, Strawn and Wisner.
Good catch, Dave. I’ll get that updated.