After overcoming Bay FC in a thrilling NWSL quarter-final showdown, the Washington Spirit are confident their route to the championship will be paved with grit and the phenomenal support they receive from their fans.

The Spirit looked patchy for long parts of Sunday’s first play-off match, especially the first half when they failed to find their rhythm. This may partly have to do with the many injuries the team has had to deal with.

Rookie Croix Bethune, whose 10 assists lead the league, is out after tearing her meniscus in August. The team’s joint top scorer, Ouleymata Sarr, has been out since September with a back injury and veteran Andi Sullivan tore her ACL in October.

Those injuries took their toll and the home team had four rookies in their starting team for the match. Goalkeeper Ashley Kingsbury acknowledged that may have played a role.

“We’re a young group, so maybe it was a little bit of nerves that we had to get out of the way in the first half,” she said. “But once we gave in, you really saw us saying, ‘We have to go now. There is no time to waste, our season is on the line.’

“Hopefully we have taken that out and we can be a little sharper in the semi-finals.”

If there’s one thing the Spirit has shown this season, it’s that they have the courage to fight their way through adversity. As they faced off a tough challenge from Bay FC, striker Trinity Rodman, who forced the own goal that proved to be the winner, said the occasion may have had something to do with it.

“I think the hardest thing about playoffs is that it can become very distracting and very claustrophobic in a way,” the USWNT forward told ESPN.

“I feel like it’s a lot of emotions. There’s a lot going on and that includes the high level we’re playing at. Sometimes you can get lost in that, in the momentum of the game, and sometimes it gets a bit sloppy. It was definitely a different energy, but it was high energy, high intensity.

“What we do need to improve on is the composure. We forced a lot of balls when we didn’t have to. We could have changed the ball when we had a lot more time than we thought. I think it was just the frenetic energy. We will definitely do that keep an eye on it and solve it for the next match.”

All the nerves, the pressure of the occasion and everything else seemed to disappear as soon as the home team fell behind. Scoring a goal seemed to be the catalyst for them to find their mojo. As Audi Field got louder, so did the intensity of the Spirit. When the goal came, it seemed seemingly inevitable.

Rodman said it’s in the team’s DNA: “Not just this year, every year I’ve been with the Spirit, it’s kind of like, if we get scored on, it’s coming. It motivates us a lot when we push for it , but we’re not stupid about it either, I think we’re strategic in the way we time it, in the way we try to make it happen.

They were of course helped by the non-stop singing from the stands. There was a brief moment of silence at Audi Field when Asisat Oshoala scored, but then normal service resumed and the decibel level continued to rise and rise as the fans – dressed all in black – lined the stands behind their team, almost ready to sing again. to step in.

When Tara McKeown, who missed her sister’s wedding to play in the game, drilled the leveler in, the noise level could have brought down the walls of Jericho.

“The sound after we scored the equalizer was just unbelievable,” said defender Esme Morgan. ‘My ears were ringing.

“When you’re playing away you might not feel that lift from the crowd, whereas Bay, after they scored, they actually just came up behind us and it was almost like they sucked the ball into the net for us. It’s giving me goosebumps if I just talk about it.

“It was just crazy and so much fun to be a part of. Obviously a sold out game, over 19,000 people here, and I think that’s why we got the comeback.”

As they get ready to face Gotham in the semi-finals, they’ll need the fans, who have already set record numbers this season, to do it again. But on the pitch, the players will also have to call on the mentality that has seen them through the season and past a resurgent opponent in the quarter-finals.

Rodman expects it to be even tougher: “It will be a tough match. But this was definitely a learning experience and I’m glad our rookies went through it. Now they have that under their belt, they have got the nerves out and now we can really concentrate on ourselves.”

With a full week to rest and recover from the extra-time exertions, Kingsbury harkens back to the echoes of their 2021 championship-winning season, when they went through a similar stretch, once again pointing to the tireless spirit that carried them over the line brought.

“It’s very similar,” she said. “We went to extra time in 2021. That never says that spirit was evident on that day. Tara played a great game and scored. Her sister got married and she was here and committed to the team. You could tell she was.” ” like, ‘I’m not missing my sister’s wedding to go out in the quarterfinals!'”

That’s the kind of mentality it takes to get to the championship game and then win it.

“It’s one thing to have a great team,” defenseman Gabrielle Carle said. “It’s something else to have a team that is mentally strong and I think that’s what we showed. It’s very important in the play-offs to have that kind of mentality and hopefully that will get us there help you through.”

Kingsbury has a warning for the champions when they visit Audi Field for the semi-finals: “This team will fight no matter what happens and we can do anything with this kind of crowd behind us!”

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