Courage drop home match against Washington Spirit

N.C. — The North Carolina Courage fell to the Washington Spirit, 2-1, in a hard-fought contest that featured a standout performance from Meredith Speck and several scoring chances pieced together in the final moments of the match.

Trinity Rodman and Julia Roddar tallied individual goals for Washington to seal the win for the Spirit. As the playoff picture continues to take shape, the Courage remain in contention for a playoff spot at sixth in the table but remain contested by NJ/NY Gotham FC and the Orlando Pride, making it essential that the Courage collect points in their next two matches.

“Performance-wise, everyone battled, everyone competed,” Kaleigh Kurtz said following the match. “There were a lot of really good takeaways, the two goals were really unfortunate, [there was] a poor misclearance by me on the first one, and then Casey was screened on the second one, so that’s really unfortunate. But I think there are more positive takeaways than negative takeaways on this game, it’s just really disappointing to have that kind of grit and fight for 90 minutes and not even get a point out of it.”

“Basically, I was thinking I would seal [the ball] off in case [Washington] tried to clear it, and Jess played it - she’s just so dangerous,” Meredith Speck said of her goal. “She got endline, and I thought, okay, I have to keep going, because it’s just me and Debinha in the box. [Jess] played a very tough ball between the defender and the goalie and it was back post, and I was like, I need to run through this, and I literally ran into the post, but it was worth it.”

In the final minutes of the first half, Trinity Rodman opened scoring for the Spirit, intercepting a clearance inside the Courage eighteen and scoring to give Washington a 1-0 lead despite captain Abby Erceg’s best effort at blocking the shot before it entered the net. The Spirit’s lead held until the half expired, leaving the Courage to erase the deficit in the second half.

In the 60th minute, a breakaway from Jessica McDonald culminated with the forward sending a ball across the face of the net. Ricocheting off of Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe, the cross fell to Meredith Speck, who had crashed the far post. Cleaning up the deflection, Speck put away her third goal of the season to knot the score at a goal apiece. Unfortunately for the North Carolina side, Washington’s Julia Roddar capitalized on a set piece to give the visitors a 2-1 lead that the Courage would be unable to recover. Despite several near-chances and an impressive showing from substitutes Amy Rodriguez and Taylor Smith, the Spirit came away with three points.

The Courage will play their last regular season home game against NJ/NY Gotham FC on Sunday, Oct. 17 at Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park at 2 p.m. ET.