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The MLS Cup seemingly was won, then lost and won again, and Elizabeth Checketts was stunned.
The 17-year-old daughter of Real Salt Lake's majority owner "has just grown up with this team and loves this team," Dave Checketts said, "and the look on her face when Robbie Russell's kick went in ... she had been trying to prepare herself for a letdown, and when we won, it was like she didn't know how to accept it."
Happily telling the story during the team's championship celebration at Rio Tinto Stadium, Checketts relived "an extraordinary moment for our family."
They were not the only ones. This was a night when RSL played itself into the sporting consciousness of Utah, beyond the team's devoted followers. Whether that status is temporary or the championship has some staying power is an issue for next spring.
Regardless, the way RSL won the title illustrated how fragile a penalty-kick shootout can be, and how -- as experienced by Elizabeth Checketts and everyone who cares deeply about this team -- the emotions swung wildly back and forth during those few minutes in Seattle. Soccer purists decry having penalty kicks decide a game; RSL coach Jason Kreis still wishes his team could have won before then, as it probably deserved to do.
Yet those kicks will remain at the center of RSL history.
Los Angeles Galaxy star Landon Donovan's kick sailed high over the goal, and "I just knew we were going to win then," Dave Checketts said.
Andy Williams' game-winning attempt was saved, and "I really kind of thought we would lose it," Kreis said.
Instead, Chris Wingert kept RSL alive, and Russell won the MLS Cup in the next round.
As a defender, Wingert rarely is involved in scoring plays. And in Major League Soccer, penalty kicks are used to break ties only in playoff games. Yet because of collegiate experience with St. John's, Wingert wanted to kick, if the situation arose.
In the Eastern Conference final at Chicago the previous week, Kreis listed Wingert as the No. 8 kicker (five rounds is standard; anything beyond that becomes the equivalent of extra innings) and Ned Grabavoy won the game in the seventh round.
So when the final whistle sounded and 30 minutes of overtime left the teams tied 1-1 in Seattle, Wingert ran up to Kreis and begged to kick. Kreis made him No. 6 -- behind teammates including Grabavoy and Williams, and ahead of Fabian Espindola, who missed his chance to win the Chicago game in the sixth round.
In the fifth round, Williams could have won the title, and imagine the tale that would be told about the last original RSL member coming through in the city where his wife has undergone treatment for leukemia. "I just thought it would be a storybook ending," Kreis said. "The tears were already welling up in my eyes."
But the Galaxy's Josh Saunders made a save, and then former RSL player Chris Klein scored to begin the sixth round and Wingert was stepping up with a chance to lose the game.
"I kept telling myself, 'I got it, I got it,' trying to convince myself I was going to make it," Wingert said.
Kreis liked Wingert's confidence, how he was so "adamant" about wanting to kick. Yet Williams' miss also made Kreis wonder, "Maybe this is destiny; maybe it's not our time."
And then Wingert delivered. Soon afterward, he became the easily overlooked hero, thanks to RSL goalkeeper Nick Rimando's save, followed by Russell's game winner. But Wingert should never be forgotten as a symbol of the champions' ability to sidestep an entire month of one potentially crushing, season-ending sequence after another.
Even if he had missed, "I still would have been proud of myself for taking it, and just having the guts to go through with it," Wingert said.
Wingert managed to concentrate on how he wanted to kick the ball, he said, "as opposed to worrying about what's going to happen if I make it or I don't make it."
Wingert made it, then Russell won it. That chronology is critical in RSL lore. Without Wingert, there's no Russell, and no title.
