Lights Fall 5-3 to Lexington in the Final Match at Cashman Field

October 17, 2026

LAS VEGAS

Cashman Field did not go quietly. The last professional match at the downtown Las Vegas stadium produced eight goals, a lead that changed hands all night and a home team chasing an equalizer — and its season — into stoppage time. But when the final whistle blew on Saturday night, Lexington SC had beaten the Las Vegas Lights 5-3 on Farewell to Cashman Night, and two endings landed at once: the Lights' playoff hopes were over, and so was professional sport at the ballpark on Las Vegas Boulevard North, 43 years after the modern stadium opened and nearly 80 years after games were first played on the site.

An eight-goal goodbye

It was level, fittingly, for a long time. The teams traded blows through a first half that finished 2-2, the kind of open, end-to-end game a farewell crowd would have scripted for itself. Las Vegas needed a win to keep its postseason alive, and played like it; Lexington, already holding the first playoff berth in club history and chasing a top-four finish and a home playoff match, had no reason to sit back — and didn't. Lexington finished with a 9-2 advantage in corner kicks, a fair summary of where the pressure kept coming from.

The second half belonged to the visitors. Lexington scored three times after the break to Las Vegas's once, building a 4-3 lead that the Lights — roared on through the closing minutes by a crowd that had come to say goodbye to the building as much as to watch a match — could not quite close. When Las Vegas pushed everyone forward chasing the equalizer its season required, Lexington added a fifth goal in stoppage time to finish the scoring at 5-3. Fans had received a miniature replica of Cashman Field as the night's giveaway, per KLAS; fireworks preceded the match and a light show followed it. The result in the middle, though, wrote the ending nobody in gold wanted: elimination, in the last game the stadium will ever host.

The stakes that made it hurt

The Lights came into Saturday in 10th place in the Western Conference at 10-12-6, knowing only a win kept the playoff race alive into next weekend's regular-season finale. The math had narrowed painfully over eight days: Lexington clinched its berth on October 9, and Las Vegas's 3-2 loss at Phoenix Rising the next night — a comeback that fell just short, per the club — left the Lights needing to win out. They finish the night 10-13-6, and next Saturday's trip to Monterey Bay FC is now only about the final line of the record book. Las Vegas's attack was led all season by Johnny Rodriguez, who entered the night with 12 goals, and by captain Christian Pinzón, whose eight assists were one off the league lead, per Lexington's scouting report. Lexington, unbeaten in its last five entering the match and powered by Phillip Goodrum's 12 goals and Blaine Ferri's nine assists, improves to 14-10-5. Earlier today, Previously looked ahead to one last night at Cashman; the result piece is the other half of that story, and the rest of Saturday's results are on the sports desk.

What Cashman was

Before it was the Lights' stadium, it was Las Vegas's stadium — nearly 80 years of it, in the club's own telling. A wooden ballpark rose on the site in 1947 and hosted its first game in May 1948, along with the Las Vegas Wranglers, the Helldorado rodeo and a 1955 heavyweight fight in which Archie Moore beat Nino Valdes over 15 rounds, per KLAS. The Oakland Raiders played a 1964 AFL preseason game there. The old park fell quiet in the 1970s before a $26 million rebuild opened the modern Cashman Field in 1983 with a major league exhibition between the Padres and Mariners. Triple-A baseball followed for 35 years — the Las Vegas Stars from 1983 to 2000, then the 51s — including a 1993 White Sox–Cubs exhibition that drew more than 15,000 fans, still the site's attendance record, and three consecutive Triple-A World Series in the late 1990s. The Beach Boys, Ice Cube and Metallica all played concerts there; KLAS notes that tickets for Metallica's September 1998 Cashman show started at $30.

Soccer arrived last, and stayed longest of the modern tenants' final era. The Lights played their first regular-season home match at Cashman on March 24, 2018, sharing the venue with the 51s for one season before becoming sole tenant when baseball moved to Summerlin. The club reached its first playoff berth in 2024, the same year former major league star José Bautista acquired the team and added a Premium Deck in the old outfield, converting a baseball park into something close to a soccer stadium for its final seasons.

Why it is ending

The ending was set in motion in late 2024, when the City of Las Vegas put the Cashman complex up for auction. Homebuilder Lennar submitted the highest bid, which the City Council unanimously approved in March 2025, per the club's farewell announcement; the site is slated for housing redevelopment, and the Lights' lease runs through the conclusion of the 2026 season. No demolition date has been announced, and the club has not said where it will play in 2027. "Cashman Field has served as a great home for the Lights since 2018, and we look forward to welcoming fans to the stadium for a final celebration of this historic venue," Bautista said when the farewell campaign was announced. "We are continuing to build the best professional soccer team for Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, and I am excited about our next step in 2027 and beyond."

What comes next

One match remains on the Lights' schedule — October 24 at Monterey Bay — and then the questions that Saturday night could not answer take over: where a team that has only ever played downtown plays next, and what rises on the Cashman site once the housing redevelopment begins. What is certain is the final entry in the stadium's own ledger. Cashman Field hosted its last professional game the way it hosted so many of its best ones — loudly, under lights, with the home crowd standing at the end, even if this time they were standing to say goodbye. Across town the same night, the Golden Knights beat Pittsburgh 6-2 at T-Mobile Arena — the new face of Las Vegas sport winning at the venue that replaced places like Cashman, while the old one bowed out a few miles north.