North Carolina Courage 2 – 1 Manchester City
Cary, NC–Despite owning the run of play through much of the first half, the North Carolina Courage found themselves trailing Manchester City 1-0 at halftime. The Courage pressured The Blues throughout the game but goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck parried away everything North Carolina threw at her. Georgia Stanway’s solid strike put Manchester on top shortly before halftime.
Looking to inject some firepower into the lineup, Courage coach Paul Riley put USWNT forward Jessica McDonald in for Kristen Hamilton at halftime. Crystal Dunn, in her first match at WakeMed Soccer Park since joining the USWNT training camp in May, created all kinds of problems for the City defense. Heather O’Reilly and Denise O’Sullivan had entered the game in the 65th minute bringing fresh legs to Riley’s squad. With the Courage knocking on the door, Mother Nature intervened and the game was put on hold with lightning in the area.
Following a delay of over an hour, the teams reconvened after a brief warmup period. Riley brought in Julia Spetsmark and McKenzie Meehan for Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams as play got underway. In her debut with the Courage, Meehan converted a corner kick from O’Reilly to bring the home club level in the 84th minute. Like the opening match between Olympic Lyonnais and Atletico Madrid, it looked like this match would be decided by penalty kicks. And then Cari Roccaro disrupted a Manchester attack and got the ball over to Jaelene Hinkle. Hinkle lobbed a “Hail Mary” pass to a sprinting McDonald who beat the City defense and slotted the ball past Roebuck in stoppage time to send North Carolina back to the ICC Women’s championship game.
The championship game on Sunday will be a rematch of last year’s final against Olympique Lyonnais and will be televised on ESPN2.
All photos by Victoria Klum.
