ORLANDO, Fla. (Sept. 6, 2026)\u00a0\u2013 The Orlando Pride (9-12-2, 29 points) earned a 3-1 victory over the Houston Dash (7-11-5, 26 points) on Sunday night at Inter.co Stadium, marking their fifth consecutive win over Houston in matches played\u00a0at home. <\/p>\n
After controlling much of the opening stages, the Pride pulled ahead in the 14th minute through\u00a0an\u00a0own goal. Barbra Banda\u00a0drove toward the\u00a0endline\u00a0before\u00a0playing\u00a0a\u00a0ball across goal\u00a0that\u00a0was deflected by Houston goalkeeper Jane Campbell, and the loose rebound ricocheted off defender Leah Klenke and into the back of the net. <\/p>\n
Thirty minutes later, Summer Yates drew a penalty after being brought down inside the box. Banda stepped up to the spot and calmly converted the first penalty kick of her NWSL career to double Orlando’s lead and send the Pride into halftime with a two-goal advantage. The strike marked the Zambia international’s 14th goal of the season, setting a new club record for the most goals scored by an individual player in a single NWSL season. <\/p>\n
In the 63rd minute, the Pride extended their lead through Haley McCutcheon. The midfielder played a one-two with Banda before unleashing a left-footed volley from just inside the box into the top corner. The goal marked McCutcheon’s fourth of the 2026 campaign and established a new single-season career high for the midfielder.<\/p>\n
\n Interim\u00a0Head Coach\u00a0Yolanda Thomas:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was not a single member of staff that either\u00a0works\u00a0in our environment in our building or in our front office that was not involved in making this happen.\u00a0The togetherness was incredible, the willingness to step up to the plate and kind of do what needed to be done, on all fronts, whether that was tactical or ops or media or just being a shoulder to lean on, really, it was truly amazing to see people come together in really difficult circumstances and while dealing with kind of personal loss because we were all individually affected personally,\u00a0while\u00a0we recognize that have a job to do. So,\u00a0it was\u00a0really neat\u00a0to kind of watch that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Orlando Pride Midfielder Haley McCutcheon:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that we did exactly what we wanted to do. We came out strong. [Yolanda Thomas] really stressed our defensive principles in shape and pressing, and so,\u00a0I think we\u00a0executed and\u00a0kind of gave\u00a0them nothing.\u00a0So\u00a0we’re\u00a0really happy\u00a0and\u00a0I think that\u00a0looked like the old Orland Pride.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pride will now travel to Kansas City to take on the Kansas City Current on Friday, Sept. 11, at CPKC Stadium (8 p.m. ET | Prime Video).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. (Sept. 6, 2026)\u00a0\u2013 The Orlando Pride (9-12-2, 29 points) earned a 3-1 victory over the Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[128105,148923,148928,56,58,57,148926,148925,148924,223,148922,148930,148927,148929],"class_list":["post-428611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-barbra-banda","tag-haley-mccutcheon","tag-hannah-anderson","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-julie-doyle","tag-kerry-abello","tag-kylie-strom","tag-news","tag-orlando-pride","tag-orlvshou-09-06-2026","tag-sanne-lekven","tag-summer-yates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}