After Jaedyn Shaw scored in the 12th minute, San Diego Wave fans might have expected an easy time with the visiting (and winless) Orlando Pride.
But nope.
San Diego (3-2-0, 9 points) fell to Orlando (1-4-0, 3 points) in a 3-1 loss Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium.
Forward Shaw scored with a right-footed shot from an angle in front of the goal. Midfielder Makenzy Doniak sent the assist in from outside the box to Shaw on the near post, who slotted it into the bottom corner.
But Orlando leveled the match in the 26th minute off a corner kick from Adriana Leal da Silva, connecting to Mikayla Cluff.
Shaw earned her third goal of the season and sixth of her professional career. The 18-year-old is now tied for the team lead along with forward Alex Morgan. Shaw also is tied for second in the NWSL for regular-season goals scored by teenagers.
Mallory Swanson ranks first with 8 goals, and Shaw has 18 months left as a teenager.
In the 43rd minute, Haley McCutcheon doubled Orlando’s scoreline with a header inside the box to the bottom left corner. Messiah Bright added the third goal for the visiting team in the 69th minute.
Second-half substitute Melanie Barcenas, 15, added an offensive spark for the home side as the Wave battled to find a breakthrough opportunity.
Barcenas, a forward, made her professional debut after entering the match in the 71st minute — the youngest player in the National Women’s Soccer League.
Announced on March 21, Barcenas was the first youth local player to be signed in the NWSL and the youngest to sign in league history at 15 years and 138 days (now 15 years and 177 days old).
In the 82nd minute, a VAR call erased a second-half San Diego goal, helping Orlando secure the three points.
Wave coach Casey Stoney called her team’s start “the brightest” she’s seen for a while but then had some “really sloppy areas” that let the Pride back into the game.
“And we seem to get rattled, and we couldn’t keep our quality,” she said. “So, very, very, I’m not often disappointed. I’m disappointed tonight. Really disappointed.”
She went on.
“The amount of technical errors we made, the amount of turnovers under no pressure. And then the way we’ve defended, now, we defended immensely last week and then we’ve defended poorly. For the second goal, we don’t track. For the third goal, our shape’s not right.”
Stoney wouldn’t discredit the players’ effort.
“They put it all out there,” she said. “But for us we started so well. And then as soon as we make mistakes, we’re so comfortable. We make silly mistakes and let the opposition back into the game. … But we can’t sulk, there’s no time in this league to sulk. We gotta learn to recover. And we have a massive game next week.”
Next up: The Wave starts a three-game road trip, kicking off against the Washington Spirit on Saturday, May 6, at Audi Field. Beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific, the match will be available live on CBS.
Notes
- Midfielder Makenzy Doniak earned her first assist of the season.
- Forward Sofia Jakobsson earned her first start of the season. The Swedish international came on as a second-half substitute in the Wave’s last match, a 2-0 win over Angel City FC, and scored her first-ever NWSL game winning goal.
- Defender Naomi Girma earned her 25th straight start for the Wave since being drafted #1 overall in the 2022 NWSL Draft. The 2022 NWSL Rookie and Defender of the Year wore the captain’s armband for the second time in her professional career in tonight’s match.
- Goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan and defender Kristen McNabb were joined by friends and family and honored prior to the match for reaching 100 NWSL appearances. Sheridan reached the feat on April 1, while McNabb earned it last weekend on April 19.