Snow Clasico, Lightning Delays, and Frozen Beer Taps: A Comprehensive History of Colorado Rapids Bad Weather Games

EDITORIAL – The Centennial State and Colorado Rapids have a rich history of crazy weather. Look no further than the various Snow Clasico games or the six weather delayed/postponed matches of 2023. Here I document every weather type that’s affected the Rapids and Colorado Soccer.

MLS 1.0 Scheduling and MLS Cup 1997 Rain

Let’s start by acknowledging that there weren’t as many games with bad weather in the first 10 years of MLS. The season started later in the year during the MLS 1.0 and 2.0 eras. The first 34-game season was 2011. When the season starts in April and MLS Cup is before Thanksgiving, it’s easy to avoid winter weather. Kickoffs earlier in the day helped as well. We’ll only be mentioning Mile High Stadium once the rest of this article.

But of course the first bad weather game for the Rapids had to be their first final. MLS Cup 1997 was a rain soaked mess. Cold wind, some sleet, and all that rain made the field at RFK Stadium terrible. Colorado lost 2-1. The conditions did not help, but D.C. United was the better team.

2023: Rain, Thunder, and Hurricanes

This article was partially inspired by how many weather delays the club has had this summer. 2023 is already the rainiest year in club history with 18.1 inches as of September 28. With all that precipitation has come thunder, lightning, and hail.

Three home games were delayed as a result. The 4th of July match against Portland Timbers was delayed nearly two hours. Play was suspended at halftime. The second half was played eight days later.

Former Rapid and current Timber Erik Miller called it one of the weirdest things he’d experienced in his career. The now-fired Giovanni Savarese and Robin Fraser had a laugh about the second half being a total waste of time. “The game was a reflection of the oddity of the event.”

The June 21 game against Vancouver Whitecaps was abandoned after over four hours of delays. Here’s a full timeline of what that was like. Captain William Yarbrough came out of the locker room in full kit a quarter to midnight to thank fans for sticking around. The July 31 Leagues Cup game against Toluca started two hours late due to lighting as well. I was not done with media until after 1 a.m. as a result, and on a work night no less.

Three road games as well have featured delays this season. Games at Orlando City and FC Dallas were delayed due to lightning. While the Orlando game was played that night, the match at Dallas was moved from Wednesday October 4 to Saturday October 14 because the lightning was so bad.

Colorado was scheduled to play at LAFC in their first game back from Leagues Cup on August 19. Hurricane Hilary saw that game rescheduled to the following Wednesday, August 23.

All these delays became a recurring and dreadful joke amongst the Rapids Community. Bianchi Watch became a thing as local weatherman and former beat writer Chris Bianchi kept fans updated on the forecast.

In total, six games this year have been delayed due to weather with three of those needing to be rescheduled. DSGP at least avoided destructive hailstorms this year, unlike Red Rocks.

Hey, at least 2023 avoided a bomb cyclone which postponed the April 10, 2019 match against Seattle Sounders to September 7. The front range got nearly a foot of snow in some areas that week. Colorado won the rescheduled fixture 2-0.

Rain, Rain, Go Away Games

The Rapids have been relatively lucky when it comes to weather on the road, MLS Cups not withstanding. Mark Johnson, an original Rapids Season Ticket Member, cannot remember any big Nor’easter games. There’s been some rain. Some light snow. No Snow Clasico or MLS Cup 1997 weather.

Maybe the two counterexamples are the 2022 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup match at Minnesota United and the aforementioned 2023 regular season match at LAFC. That Open Cup game saw Allianz Arena become Lake Allianz. The match was abandoned and resumed in the second half the following day. Colorado lost 2-1.

For those wondering about the 1999 Open Cup Final, it was played in Columbus in mid-September.

That LAFC game was delayed three days due to Tropical Storm Hilary, which at one point was a Category 4. Los Angeles County got a lot of rain but did not suffer the wrath of a proper hurricane. By the time the game was played, the weather and pitch were not a problem.

A west coast hurricane that delayed home games for both LA teams that just happened to be against the two Rocky Mountain teams? The MLS Script Writers outdid themselves here.

The 2010 MLS Cup Playoffs: White Knuckles and Squeaky Bums

Rapids fans white knuckled it through the 2010 MLS Cup Playoffs. Johnson remembers the first leg of the Conference Semifinals against Columbus Crew having brutal cold and wind. The Conference Final against San Jose Earthquakes was about as cold but not windy. It’s hard to get accurate temperature information from games during these years. But Johnson thinks it was low 20s°F so lets go with that.

That set up for the coldest MLS Cup Final to date on November 21, 2010. The New York Times called the temperatures near-freezing. MLSSoccer.com has it as 43°F at kickoff, an MLS Cup record to that point.

Is the temp at kickoff the best way to measure that? Should you take an average of the temperature throughout the game? What about the coldest temperature measurement during the game? Are these with or without wind chill? And where are these weather stations located? Are they on a roof somewhere, on the concourse, at field level, or are they outside the stadium?

I digress. It was an 8:30 p.m. kickoff time locally. With extra time, the match wasn’t over till around 11. Every fan, player, and club employee I’ve spoken to said that was the coldest game they’d been involved in to that point in their lives. Get out of here with your 43 degrees, MLS.

To be fair, that record was broken three years later at MLS Cup 2013, with 22°F at kickoff and significant wind chill and lower temps in stoppage time and penalties.

CCL Big Chill and Other Home Cold Games

DICK’s Sporting Goods Park has had its fair share of other cold games even when it has not snowed. The first ever game at DSGP was April 7, 2007. Colorado defeated D.C. 2-1. Herc Gomez scored the first goal in stadium history in the 19th minute. Roberto Brown had the winner. Terry Cooke assisted both goals. It was a chilly affair with Gomez wearing gloves. At the time, this game set a record for the coldest match in MLS history.

“It was very cold,” as Rapids Foreign Legion recalls.

“Freezing cold. Wet snow. Sold a lot of scarves that day. 1876 ran out of coffee,” Mark Johnson recalls.

Colorado has hosted three other games that had snow fall but weren’t proper Snow Clasicos.

The most uncomfortable match at Mile High may have been April 29, 2005 against then New York MetroStars. Johnson recalls a cold game with some snow, but there was no accumulation. The digital footprint of MLS wasn’t that good in 2005. GettyImages has two photos from the game, one that clearly shows it snowing but it was not sticking. Colorado lost 3-1.

Colorado beat United 4-1 on April 3, 2011. Three years later, they lost to Chivas USA 3-1 on May 11, 2014. Both games featured light snow. Photos and highlights show snow piled up on the sidelines but little on the pitch or in the stands. Credit to the grounds crew for making the pitch playable. The stands were about as empty as we’ve seen for a Snow Clasico, suggesting the forecasts may have overestimated or the temperatures were cold enough to keep fans at home.

Let’s circle back to my previous question about how one determines and compares temperatures at games. NO QUESTION February 20, 2018 set a new record for coldest game involving MLS teams. Colorado hosted Toronto FC in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions League Round of 16. It was in the teens at kickoff but dropped to near-zero Fahrenheit before fulltime.

This game will forever be known as the Big Chill at DSGP. Frozen beer taps left Rabbi and others to suffer this 2-0 loss sober. Every player had long sleeves and gloves on, even the born and raised Canadians. Jay Chapman compared it to Siberia. Forget CCL Fever. Everyone at that game got CCL Frostbite. Anthony Hudson (in his first competitive match as Rapids manager) said his water bottle froze completely. I swear I saw the Night King on the other side of the parking lot as I got to my car at the end of the night.

Honorable mention to Colorado Springs Switchbacks and Northern Colorado Hailstorm. The two sides met in an Open Cup game this past April. It was below freezing by the time extra time kicked off. Maybe 200 fans left at that point on a school night. They missed playing in snow by 30 minutes.

Rapids Wonderland: Snow Clasico 2, 3, and 4

The Burgundy Boys have played in three proper snow games, all at the Richard. Refs brought out the orange or yellow ball, depending on the year. Players had long sleeves and gloves on, maybe even thermal layers.

Snow Clasico 2: April 16, 2016, a 2-1 win over New York Red Bulls. Temperature at kickoff 31°F. About a foot of snow leading up to the game. Several inches more during the 90.

Kickoff was delayed to the evening to clear the field, but snow throughout only made conditions worse. Jermaine Jones made his Rapids debut, scoring in the 21st minute. RBNY clawed one back in the 60th, but Dominique Badji scored the winner with 10 minutes to go, his first of the year. And that was after chipping a tooth. Legend. Sean St Ledger had a hilariously inappropriate comment on social media that was later deleted. If you know you know.

This was the second game of a 15-match unbeaten run for the club. Individual performances sparked good seasons for a several players, not just the goal scorers. This game was character building for that 2016 season, Keep Fighting and all. The box score has the attendance as 10,670, but there weren’t more than 2,000 butts in seats if that.

Snow Clasico 3: March 2, 2019, a 3-3 draw against Portland Timbers. 18°F at kickoff. Very little snow at kickoff, but several inches blanketed the field and stands before halftime.

An up-and-down game to open an up-and-down season. The Rapids bossed the start as Kei Kamara scored 16 minutes in. Axel Sjöberg was given a bogus red card for a handball in the box, as Diego Valeri converted the penalty.

Then the snow kicked in. Twice the Rapids came back from a goal down. Benny Feilhaber scored on a broken play to open the second half. After the game, he told me this match was worse than the 2013 MLS Cup Final because of the snow. Cold and wind is one thing. Barely being to read the ball with all the shadows and no traction is another thing. And then there’s falling down and getting covered in snow. You wipe the snow off, and it starts to melt as you run. You stop running for a bit, it starts to freeze. Yuck.

“It might have been MLS Cup ’13, but this is way worse,” Feilhaber said when asked which games was colder and worse. “Look, as much as it’s fun to watch this, I hate playing in this crap. This isn’t football. It’s crazy. We all stuck together and did a job, but it’s difficult than anything you’ve trained all preseason when the field is basically sand.”

“It felt like back in fifth grade playing tackle football on a snow day. It didn’t even feel like a real game, to be honest. It was crazy.”

Benny was salty, as usual. But he wasn’t wrong.

A Deklan Wynne own goal could have been the winner in the 66th, but Mother Nature and the MLS Script Writers had other plans. Andre Shinyashiki came off the bench in short sleeves to score a tap in at the death to earn a 3-3 draw. The former University of Denver Pioneer made it three goals for three debutants on the night. He went on to win Rookie of the Year, recording seven goals and three assists in 31 league appearances.

This game best displays what playing/watching snow soccer is like, mainly because it started during the game. It demonstrated how different and more difficult the conditions make it. The first 30 minutes were just cold. There was little grass showing by halftime. There’s an adjustment period for both teams as it starts to snow, and then another in the second half when the pitch is completely covered.

As Feilhaber put it, it’s not soccer. No player moves well. Neither does the ball. Touches and passes are sloppy. All 20 field players close in within 20 yards of the ball at times. There’s no transition play. A sequence that normally takes three players and five touches takes double of both. One slip can change everything. There’s no dribbling. Stick together. Don’t bump into each other. Play for set pieces or an opening when the other team has a wipeout.

By the start of the half, it was a pickup game. By the 60th minute, it was a slow motion game of hot potato in the shape of a rugby scrum. Come stoppage time, it might as well have been a snowball fight.

For the spectator, it’s a novelty. Albeit a low resolution one. You can barely see the ball from the stands amid a mix of glares and shadows. In person, it’s like watching a game through tinted goggles or an intense Instagram filter. The field turns into a real time heat map or chalkboard of the play.

From the players, to the press box, to the stands, you find out who the real sickos at your club are from nights like Snow Clasico 2. It’s miserable, bizarre, and exhilarating in the moment. It’s a spectacular memory you’ll being telling and exaggerating for the rest of your life.

Snow Clasico 4: February 23, 2022, a 1-0 win over Comunicaciones FC, followed by 4-3 loss in penalties. No extra time. Low single digits at kickoff. Possibly negative double digits with windchill before the game’s end. It was hard to check the temperature when it was so cold, all the electronics failed. Anecdotally, this was the coldest sporting event I ever attended.

The Rapids got Concacafed. Colorado lost the first leg of this CCL Round of 16 down in Guatemala, after a delay due to a hornets nest needing to be cleared from a goalpost.

The game got off to a good start as new signing Max Alves scoring 29 minutes in. Eventually the snow made the game ugly (see above). Few Comunicaciones players had seen snow before in person, let alone played in freezing temperatures. They put eleven players behind the ball and held on for penalties, withstanding 19 shots from the Rapids. Diego Rubio appeared to have the winner in 89th minute, but the VAR correctly ruled him offside.

Jack Price, Jonathan Lewis, Keegan Rosenberry, and Shinyashiki were all unsuccessful in PKs with three saved and one hit crossbar. Los Cremas missed three of their seven kicks as well. One could say snow is bad for penalties.

This might be my favorite of the Rapids Snow Clasicos, given the storyline for the opponent. Comunicaciones are a minnow in CCL, even worse than the Honduran or Panamanian teams. They got a lucky result in the first leg. They braved a superior opponent and unfamiliar weather to get a result. The simple fact that they didn’t wilt like a Rocky Mountain wildflower in October is amazing. To survive negative Fahrenheit temperatures, several inches of snow accumulation, and get a result after a 16th minute red card no less. What a triumph.

Unofficially, this game was colder than the TFC CCL match. With wind chill, it had a colder coldest temperature during play than Snow Clasico 2. I’ll always remember the press box joking about describing their layer strategy (legs, body, head) in soccer formations. I personally was in a 3-4-3 and perfected live tweeting and writing with my thermal gloves on.

The Original Snow Clasico: USA 1-0 Costa Rica

I saved the best for last, even if it isn’t a Rapids game. It is the best game in the history of Colorado Soccer. March 22, 2013. The United States Men’s National Team hosted Costa Rica at DSG. Forecasts called for just a few inches of snow. An estimated half foot fell on the pitch between warmups and fulltime. Kickoff temperature was 28°F, with it dropping down into the teens by fulltime. That didn’t stop 19,734 fans from sticking it out all night despite the 8 p.m. local kickoff.

Clint Dempsey, Jermaine Jones, and DeMarcus Beasley rolled up ready to Concacaf Los Ticos all night. The match got the go ahead after the grounds crew plowed the field in the weirdest pattern I’ve ever seen. Fresh falling snow made the pitch uniform in the first half. Like other snow games, there were no tactics. There’s no great analysis to be had; this was a game of moments and a battle of endurance.

Dempsey came up with the game’s only goal 16 minutes in. It was an poacher’s run on a lucky deflection for a tap in. It’s always easier to play a Snow Clasico when you’re up. The two teams traded half chances as they meandered up and down the pitch, barely able to see. This game was only going to have one good chance and Deuce left no doubt.

The only things that was going to stop the USMNT on that night were the officials or the suits. Play was stopped by referee Joel Aguilar in the 55th minute. He called over the captains Dempsey and Bryan Ruiz. Aguilar was eventually surrounded by players from both teams. Jürgen Klinsmann barged in with hand gestures mimicking the level of the snow, as if Concacaf had a ‘if it’s only this much snow, Vamos A Muchachos!’

Eventually the American shrugs beat out the Costa Rican complaints. After years of midnight fire alarms, locked practice field bathrooms, thrown batteries, and other shenanigans in Central America, the USMNT had a ‘Sure, it’s Concacaf shithousery. Deal with it,’ go in their favor.

Jones’ afro turned into a Frosted Mini-Wheat. Grounds crew tried to shovel the penalty area between stoppages, only to be ushered out of play by players. The Yanks held on for a 1-0 win.

Costa Rica later protested the result to FIFA, citing the physical integrity of the players, stadium personnel invading the pitch, snow covering the lines on the pitch and preventing the ball from rolling properly. FIFA dismissed the claim 24 hours after confirming receipt. They had their chance before the game and in that 55th minute stoppage.

So it wasn’t a pretty game of football. U.S. Soccer got away with it partially on a technicality. It was a miserably spectacular experience and a legendary memory. It’s the most famous non-Mexico World Cup Qualifier in my lifetime.

As Ian Darke said on the broadcast, “this is a night that’s gonna go down in U.S. Soccer folklore.”

It’s crazy weather games like the ones documented in this article that mythologize players, teams, and supporters.

Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images

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