Team Captain Alex Morgan seemed pretty satisfied with her team’s performance in their 8-0 win against Eastern Florida State College. Morgan was all smiles as she walked off the field, signing autographs and taking pictures with the fans. Despite the rain, plenty of fans stuck around to see the squad finish off their first game as a team.
“I’m excited to finally have our first game behind us,” Morgan said. “Looking forward to the next preseason matches and seeing how much we grow.”
Morgan made an immediate impact on the game, scoring the first goal on a penalty kick in the 4th minute. She went on to score three more goals in the first half, before coming off in the 50th minute. “I just think it was great right off the bat to get a couple of goals with the team,” Morgan said after the game. “Just having different players scoring and having the different scoring opportunities… so I know that we’ll be scoring from all different ways and all different players.”
This is only the beginning for the Orlando Pride, who will go on to play three more preseason matches in Florida before playing their season opener against the Portland Thorns on April 17th. One of the main goals with any new squad is to create cohesion and chemistry among the players. Today, the Pride took the first step towards achieving that goal.
“I think just given that I’ve only been training with the team for three days and the team together training less than a week, we’re just gonna continue growing,” Morgan said.
While the team knows that there is still a lot more work to be done, Morgan seemed pretty pleased with how she and her teammates performed in their first match. “It was a good step forward for us.”
