TAMPA, Fla. – The Tampa Bay Sun opened its season with three straight road contests. The results in those matches: one win, one loss, one draw.<\/p>\n
On Saturday night, they returned to Tampa Bay for their home opener against Fort Lauderdale United FC.<\/p>\n
Home openers can be a party, with great atmospheres as fans welcome their team back to their home stadium.<\/p>\n
For the Tampa Bay Sun on Saturday night, it wasn\u2019t just a party; it was a dance party for about 30 minutes during a delay due to malfunctions with the lights.<\/p>\n
As the sun was setting during the second half, it became apparent that the lights were not turned on. At the 64th minute, the officials called a delay while the operations crew at Suncoast Credit Union Field worked on getting the lights on.<\/p>\n
Fans turned on the flashlights on their phones, and as the teams started walking into the locker room, three of the four lights turned on so the players turned around and ran right back onto the field.<\/p>\n
But the fourth light was being stubborn, so the fans had a dance party for a little while until they finally resumed play, an experience Sun players said they\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last few games we wanted to play for Tampa and show that we can be winners for Tampa and make a reason for the people to want to come each week to watch us. And I thought they were incredible. Like, honestly, it was great that they kept the music playing. Their dancing, like, kept the vibe high because honestly, it was kind of annoying,\u201d Sun forward Shea Connors said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going over to the refs before the lights went out, so I was like ready to go on. And then I felt like the anticipation was just building. But I think it almost helped me because, like, the more it just the anticipation kept going, I was like, I\u2019m ready, put me in, let\u2019s do this. And then I think just each player was coming up to me to their like, make a difference, get in there and let\u2019s go,\u201d Sun forward Tori Zierenberg said.<\/p>\n
Before the lights fiasco, the first half had some entertaining moments. Fort Lauderdale scored in the 24th minute as Sh\u2019Nia Gordon found the back of the net. The Sun had a couple of good chances, but those shots soared over the net.<\/p>\n
In the 64th minute, right after the delay ended, the Sun netted the equalizer as Sydney Nasello found Zierenberg who buried it right after entering the game as a sub.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay kept the pressure on, and the fans who stayed through the delay got a show in the 81st minute when Connors pulled off a nice move in the box to get separation and found the back of the net, propelling the Sun to a 2-1 win<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it was a little daunting, you know, because you keep thinking for a very long period of time like we haven\u2019t scored in 60 minutes, now we need to score twice in 30 minutes. So that stress can be like a lot. I think for me it was taking its toll. But I didn\u2019t see that for the ladies. They were actually wanting the lights to come on. They were ready to play. They felt like completely confident that they were going to get the job done. So, you know, that felt pretty good, and it felt like that when they stepped back on the field,\u201d Sun head coach Denise Schilte-Brown said.<\/p>\n
The Sun return to the pitch on Friday, September 18 at DC Power FC. Their next home match will be on Sunday, October 4 against Lexington SC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. – The Tampa Bay Sun opened its season with three straight road contests. The results in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1238,1236,70639,115,110,135,137,136,835],"class_list":["post-398651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-sports","tag-florida-sports","tag-michael-epps","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398651","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=398651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}