The United States women’s national soccer team took one look at the artificial turf field that was to be the playing surface for Sunday night’s friendly against Trinidad and Tobago and said, enough.
Finally, enough.
For years, they had put up with the scrapes and the rug burns and the rock-hard surfaces that come with playing on fake grass, but this was a field too far. The seams at Aloha Stadium were pulling apart, and there were sharp pellets embedded in the carpet. It wasn’t safe, the players said, and neither was the grass field they had been given for practices at the University of Hawaii.