Denver Summit FC Earns First Home Win, Beats Orlando Pride 3-1 on Pride Night
Eva Gaetino's first career goal, Janine Sonis's back-to-back braces, and a suffocating double pivot sent the 2024 NWSL champions home winless in Colorado.
Commerce City, Colo. — Denver Summit FC earned their first home win in franchise history Saturday night, defeating the Orlando Pride 3-1 in front of a sellout crowd of 16,974 at DICK'S Sporting Goods Park. The victory moves the expansion club to 3-3-3 on the season, good for seventh in the NWSL table with 12 points.
The numbers behind the result weren't close. Denver generated 2.98 expected goals to Orlando's 0.55. They out-shot the Pride 23 to 9, completed 510 passes to Orlando's 388, and recorded twice as many touches in the Orlando penalty box — 26 to 13.
A Goal Built in Practice
Eva Gaetino opened the scoring in the 10th minute — Denver's earliest goal of the season — off a designed set-piece routine. Ayo Oke executed a short corner, Melissa Kössler redirected a header across goal, and Gaetino arrived at the back post to finish past Anna Moorhouse. Her first career professional goal.
The play was anything but accidental. Gaetino said postgame that she and Kössler communicate on the fly during corners — adjusting positioning in real time rather than running a fixed pattern. The fluidity showed.
The goal was also a reflection of what Oke brings from the right back position. Acquired from Liga MX Femenil's Pachuca for a reported $450,000 — the largest transfer fee ever paid for an American player entering the NWSL — Oke's technical quality in delivery was precisely why the club made that investment.
The Double Pivot Suffocates Banda
Denver lined up in a 4-2-3-1. The central story of the match was the double pivot of Devin Lynch and Delanie Sheehan, who controlled Orlando's central channels from the opening whistle. Barbra Banda — the NWSL's leading scorer with nine goals — was almost entirely isolated. Orlando managed just three players with shots on the night, with Banda accounting for six of the team's nine attempts alone.
Yazmeen Ryan — tied for first in the NWSL with four assists — created six chances from the left of Denver's attacking three. In the 51st minute she drove into the box and drew a foul from Oihane Hernández. Janine Sonis stepped up to convert the penalty — the first in Denver Summit FC history, and the first of Sonis's NWSL career. 2-0.
The frustration had been building in the Orlando camp for an hour. It came to a head in the 63rd minute when Angelina, who came on at halftime, pulled Sheehan's hair off the ball. VAR confirmed the incident. Straight red for violent conduct.
"The thought of it happening is really painful, but when it happens, it sort of is weirdly like a little bit of freedom because it's happened already," head coach Nick Cushing said postgame, reflecting on the back-to-back second-half collapses against San Diego and Boston that preceded this win. "If we go through it again, this is the path. This is what we have to go through to become a winning team."
Sixty Seconds
Banda pulled one back in the 76th minute off a Haley McCutcheon through ball, cutting the deficit to 2-1. It was the moment that had unraveled Denver twice before this season.
Not this time.
One minute later, Tash Flint got a shot away. An Orlando defender got a foot on it. Janine Sonis was right there for the rebound. 3-1.
Sonis finished the match with two goals and a simple explanation for her recent form.
"I've really been focusing on my defending. So maybe that's the key. Just don't focus on attacking and then it gets better."
Her standard for the evening wasn't the brace. It was the goal Denver conceded.
"I'm not even satisfied with them getting a goal. I think that the standard is a clean sheet. We'll go back and we'll definitely celebrate this win tonight, but it's back to work on Monday because it's just going to get harder from here."
Gaetino's Moment
Gaetino missed the home opener with a severe ankle injury — the swelling so bad the medical staff wouldn't clear her to play in front of 63,004 fans at Empower Field in March. She came back, has been a starter the past two Saturdays, and finished the night with 83 touches and 69 completed passes to go with her goal. She is tied for first in the NWSL in accurate long balls per 90 minutes at 4.7.
She said postgame she's still in a little bit of bliss.
World Cup Legends Were Watching
Tobin Heath and Christen Press attended Saturday's match as part of their Football Loves You campaign — a partnership with Denver Summit FC through RE_INC, the media company they co-founded to elevate women's sports.
Heath, recently inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, on what it means to see an expansion team competing with established clubs in Year One:
"It's one of the few leagues, if the only league, where an expansion team could truly win the league in their first go at it. That's what I'm excited about."
Heath, asked where she sees women's soccer in ten years:
"There is no reason why we can't be as big or bigger than the NFL. And that is my sole objective."
What's Next
Denver travels to Sandy, Utah on Saturday to face the second-place Utah Royals, who carry 20 points into the match. It is the hardest road test of Denver's inaugural season.
Cushing, for his part, isn't looking past it.
"Let's see where we can go. Let's see whether we can stay above. I think winning back-to-back, winning at home, was a real desire of mine. And this team can achieve."
Listen to The 5280 Pitch for full match analysis and a Utah Royals preview — available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
