They might be new to the league, but they are not pushovers.<\/p>\n
The Orlando Pride welcomed expansion side Denver Summit FC to town, fighting hard for a 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n
Orlando went into halftime down a goal, but Barbra Banda scored her second in as many games in the second half to earn a positive result.<\/p>\n
\u201cDenver\u2019s a great team, you know, it\u2019s hard with an expansion team. We do a lot of scouting, we prepare for their personnel, but you never really know what you\u2019re going to get,\u201d Orlando defender Cori Dyke said. \u201cBut I\u2019m really proud of the group for how we dealt with it. I thought we had a lot of energy tonight, created a lot of chances. Obviously, we really want the three points, so that\u2019s always disappointing, but I think it\u2019s a step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denver opened the scoring in the 24th minute with a goal from Melissa K\u00f6ssler. Ayo Oke\u2019s pass played K\u00f6ssler through with an excellent chance on goal. Her shot slid right past Anna Moorhouse to put the Summit up 1-0.<\/p>\n
The connection between Banda and Jacquie Ovalle finally made its mark in the 61st minute, levelling the score at 1-1. Ovalle\u2019s cross was inch-perfect, allowing Banda to head it past Abby Smith to put the Pride back in the game.<\/p>\n
Smith played a sensational game for Denver, making a career-high eight saves. Orlando peppered the goal with nine shots on target to Denver\u2019s two, but they were unable to find a second thanks to Smith\u2019s heroics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not on any one player, and I think just continuing to get those reps in training and encouraging one another and believing that it\u2019s going to click in these next few games,\u201d Dyke added about the team\u2019s struggles to score. \u201cYou just got to keep that momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orlando has a quick turnaround with a match on the road against the Chicago Stars on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They might be new to the league, but they are not pushovers. The Orlando Pride welcomed expansion side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,1335,139,141,140,3968,2062,76046,110],"class_list":["post-199984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-florida","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-pride","tag-soccer","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}