Seattle Reign FC Goalkeeper Laurel Ivory Wins Impact Save of the Week

Seattle Reign FC goalkeeper Laurel Ivory has won the Deloitte Impact Save of the Week for Week 7 of the NWSL regular season. In the 66th minute of the Reign’s match against San Diego Wave FC on May 3, Ivory made a crucial save for the Reign, allowing the team to ultimately earn three points in front of a home crowd.  

Save of the Week, an award originally established in 2016, is awarded by popular social media vote on Twitter and Instagram, to the player deemed to have made the best save over the last week of play.   

In her fourth regular season appearance and third regular season start, Ivory earned five total saves, setting a single-game career high. Her big time save in the 66th minute stopped Wave defender Kaitlyn Torpey’s shot from finding the upper corner of the goal and putting the Wave ahead in the match. Backpeddling slightly, Ivory was at full stretch, using her fingertips to keep the well-placed shot from hitting the back of the net.

“Honestly, I thought she was crossing it and I felt really good with crosses in that game, so I was kind of ready to go. To be honest, it felt like really slow motion, so when I saw how hyped everybody was, it hit me that it was going top corner. But yeah, I was just following it and it felt really comfortable and then looking back on it, I realized what it actually was and it was pretty cool to see,” said Ivory.

Ivory becomes the seventh player in Reign FC history to win Save of the Week and is the first this season to receive the honor.  

“It's really cool. All the other saves that were also this week that I've seen are equally top-class saves. I'm just happy that I was able to do it given the circumstances of the game - in any game I would be happy to do it, but especially that one. It's just really cool. I'm happy to be up there,” she said.

Watch Ivory's Save of the Week below: