Show stopping goals power Racing Louisville back to draw the Washington Spirit 2-2

Blowin’ in the wind

With high winds ravaging the pitch, it looked as if Racing Louisville would get blown away by the Washington Spirit in their home opener. By the half-time whistle, the Spirit’s Ashley Hatch had scored a brace while Racing had nothing to show for their efforts.

That changed immediately in the second half when Louisville earned a corner in less than a minute. The ball in by Wang Shuang was headed home by Abby Erceg on a massive leap that brought her head and shoulders above the competition. Just twenty minutes later, Ary Borges tied it up with a half-volley golazo off of a bad clearance. Lauren Milliet had made a run up the right and her cross was deflected out. Savannah pressed the defender with possession well enough that the attempted clearance left the ball bouncing in the box long enough for Borges to step to it and send a banger into the top right corner from 17 yards out.

In the final 30 or so minutes there were a couple of good chances for both teams to take the lead – including another potential header from Erceg – but the score stayed level until the final whistle.

There’s zero question the wind impacted the game significantly. It was blowing at a steady 25 to 30 miles per hour all match with intermittent gusts up to 45 miles per hour, strong enough to blow the ball out of position during set pieces. While less than ideal, that’s just part of the game, said Erceg.

“You go on with tactics and you work all week and then the wind just kind of takes it away so you have to adapt on the fly,” she explained. “Obviously, in the first half, we didn’t do a very good job of that and then in the second half, we just needed to make sure that we got an early goal so that we could get back in the game. Which we did.”

Erceg’s goal marks the first for Louisville in the regular season and is also her first wearing lavender. As for Borges’ goal, coach Kim Björkegren was understandably very impressed, but not surprised. “She is that kind of player that you’ll probably see that one or two more times, for sure.”

Rewriting history

This level of fight from Racing to come back from a 0-2 deficit to earn a point is a rarity for the team. In fact, the only time they’ve ever done it was last season. And that was, interestingly enough, also against the Washington Spirit. Even so, this Spirit squad is coming off of a win against last…