Taylor Kornieck lifts unbeaten Orlando Pride to draw with Washington Spirit
Orlando Pride rookie Taylor Kornieck scored her first regular-season goal in a 1-1 road draw on Sunday against Washington, preserving the team’s unbeaten regular-season streak.
After their fifth straight unbeaten game, the Pride remain the top team in the NWSL table with 11 points. The team has not lost since the Challenge Cup.
Much of the Pride’s early success this season has come from their ability to quickly bounce back from a deficit, and that was true again Sunday.
After laying pressure onto the Pride backline throughout the first half, the Spirit’s Ashley Hatch finally cracked open the scoring in the 64th minute, leaping over keeper Ashlyn Harris to head in a cross.
But the Pride allowed that lead to last for just three minutes. Marta fed Kornieck in transition, and the midfielder drove into the box to curl a quick strike to the far post just past the gloves of keeper Aubrey Bledsoe.
“We’re at the top of the table and it’s easy to get there but it’s hard to maintain,” Kornieck said. “Once we went down, we all just kept fighting and fighting and we found our chance and made a great opportunity out of it.”
Kornieck’s goal marked the first time a player besides Alex Morgan or Sydney Leroux has scored for the Pride in the regular season.
The midfielder’s presence filled a necessary gap after Leroux didn’t travel with the team to D.C. due to a left thigh injury. Kornieck provided valuable support to Morgan, taking five shots to open up the attack and supply the equalizer.
“She’s a kind of player that I don’t know if she has a ceiling,” Pride coach Marc Skinner said. “There’s still lots and lots of room for her to develop. ... It’s just about quality, it’s about time and we will expect her to be a big part of what we do going forward.”
The Pride still struggled to threaten offensively without Leroux, forcing Morgan to take on multiple defenders on her own throughout the first half.
The team managed just nine shots in the match while the Spirit pelted the Pride with 21 shots. Harris was forced to make five saves — including a pair of diving stops — to preserve the point earned from the draw.
As the game wore on, however, the Pride were able to limit the Spirit to mainly off-target shots. Immediately after the game,
Skinner said captain Ali Krieger requested to drill central-cross defending to prevent future goals like the one Hatch scored.
“The goal was unfortunate,” Krieger said. “Kelley [O’Hara] put a great cross in. Phoebe and I were in the right positions but unfortunately space doesn’t score goals. Players do. ... We just need to kind of fix those details in and around the box and work on that a bit more because those were the only real chances that they had.”
But the Pride are continuing to make themselves hard to beat, even without star players such as Leroux. That will be critical for the team as international stars such as Morgan and Marta prepare to depart for the Olympics in July.
The Pride will take a two-week break before hosting Gotham FC for their next game on June 20.
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Julia Poe at jpoe@orlandosentinel.com.
