The Wait Is Over

Six Becomes Four

Dalen Cuff (voiceover): For four teams, today starts what they hope will be a three-match march to a league championship. The Orlando Pride, buoyed by the offensive antics of Alex Morgan, Lindsey Horan, and Ashley Sanchez, seek to get Ashlyn Harris another step closer to going out on top in her final season. The Atlanta Storm, making their first-ever playoff appearance, would like nothing more than to bring the curtain down on the goalkeeper's career and punch its ticket to Boston and the Eastern Conference final. Orlando. Atlanta. Next on Lifetime.

Following the opening montage, the camera settled on Dalen and Aly Wagner.

Dalen: Welcome to Orlando City Stadium and the first game of our NWSL play-in doubleheader pitting the Orlando Pride and the Atlanta Storm. Greetings, everyone. I'm Dalen Cuff. When the season began on April 9th, these teams had very different expectations placed on them. For Orlando, the addition of Lindsey Horan was meant to elevate a Pride team that finished fourth in the East in 2021 back into the upper section of the conference. Atlanta, on the other hand, was very much a work-in-progress following the retirement of Kelley O'Hara, the off-field attack against Morgan Brian, and the eventual moves to bring in Christen Press and Emily Sonnett early in preseason. Their rise into playoff contention can be traced to a series of transactions made by the front office, starting with the two previously mentioned and then the acquisitions of Lydia Williams from the waiver wire and Janine Beckie and 2022 NWSL Rookie of the year Kayla Duran by trade. Aly, this wasn't the 2 v 3 game that most thought we'd see, but both teams proved over the 20-game schedule that they were the most consistent in the East aside from the record-breaking Boston Breakers. They finished one point apart in the standings and split their two regular-season games. Which team has the edge in this one-off today?

Aly Wagner: In the playoffs, the edge always goes to the better defense, as scoring is at a premium and the games a lot more physical when one's season is on the line. Atlanta's core of Emily Sonnett, Danelle Lindo, Morgan O'Hara, and Mana Shim are probably a bit stronger on that side of the ball than the combination of Toni Pressley, Alanna Kennedy, and McCall Zerboni. The goalkeeper battle between Ashlyn Harris and Lydia Williams will be where the result is determined, in my opinion.

Dalen: We'll let you get up to the booth, Aly, and once we return from break, we will have a feature on Ashlyn Harris ahead of her last game at Orlando City Stadium.

The feature on Ashlyn covered her childhood, how playing at North Carolina saved her, the ups-and-downs of playing in WPS and eventually NWSL, and her national team career. Following that, Dalen interviewed both Ashlyn and her wife Ali, with their son Michael trying to get his hands on Dalen's mic.

The Storm and Pride engaged in a bit of cat-and-mouse for the first half-hour, with the best chances coming from a Beckie re-direct of a Brooke Elby cross that Harris pawed away and a Horan free kick that grazed the crossbar of the Atlanta goal. Some interchange between Morgan, Horan, and Sanchez spun Lindo in the wrong direction, opening up the 2017 NWSL Championship MVP to slot a ball past Sonnett that caught Williams flat-footed to open the scoring. Lindsey stuck her tongue out at Emily, which resulted in her fiancee giving her a throat-slash in response. In the second minute of first-half stoppage time, Sonnett took a free kick from around 35 yards, which she swung into the penalty area. Kennedy mistimed her jump and barreled into Brynn Finneran, giving a penalty kick to the Storm. Lydia Williams stepped up and slammed the shot past Harris to her right.

The second half was played tentatively by both teams as neither one wanted to give up a goal that they weren't sure they could get back. With the game looking like it would be going to extra time, both Tom Sermanni and Rebecca Nolin held back on using all their substitutions. The first half of extra time saw a bit more activity, but the tempo had dropped dramatically from the first 45 minutes. At the start of the final fifteen minutes, Sermanni brought on Veronica Latsko for Rachel Hill while Nolin took the opportunity to insert Angela Salem in place of Shim. Harris saved a last-gasp strike from Morgan O'Hara and the match moved onto penalty kicks.