Rainy celebration
US blanks Mexico in friendly match at Rentschler Field
EAST HARTFORD — They announced the United States women’s national soccer goalkeepers onto the field at 6:49 p.m. Thursday night, and though they didn’t say Alyssa Naeher’s name, she got a cheer at Rentschler Field anyway.
Stratford’s own, Naeher got the start for the national team in a 4-0 win in an international friendly against Mexico. As she and backup Adrianna Franch jogged onto the field to warm up, the stands were already dotted with spreadout and loud fans.
Long parking lines had persisted since earlier in the evening, and the tailgates were still raging out in the parking lots. The crowd, announced at 21,637, was still filling in a halfhour later when the skies, threatening all day, opened up a downpour that intensified a couple of times just before kickoff. At least lightning stayed away.
But the crowd did keep filling in, cheering for team newcomers and roaring for vets like Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, who started the game, and Carli Lloyd, who was on the bench at the start as the team prepared for the Tokyo Olympics later this month.
“The crowd was awesome today, especially in the rain,” said midfielder Tobin Heath, who scored her team’s third goal 52 seconds after she came onto the field in the second half. “They came prepared with all those ponchos.”
The fans saw the first sister-to-sister goal, Massachusetts’ Kristie to Sam Mewis, in national-team history. They cheered through a deluge. And they cheered loudly for Naeher, too, before her 72nd game for the national team, behind only two other keepers in a team history that goes back to 1985. Her 31st was here, too, a draw against Australia in 2018.
A few places around southern Connecticut lay a claim to her, but she’s got an emphatic “Stratford” hometown in her biography.
Franch replaced Naeher at halftime, with Naeher tested maybe once. Maria Sanchez, a former teammate with the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars, might’ve given her another test, getting free for a left-footed drive from 12 yards out on the left side and a chance to tie the game 35 minutes in. But center back Abby Dahlkemper came in from Sanchez’s right to block away the shot.
The teams will play here
again Monday at 5 p.m. (ESPN/TUDN.com) before heading to Japan. The United States, 39-0-4 in its past 43 games, will play July 21, 24 and 27 at the Olympics, meeting Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. All three games are earlymorning starts Eastern time.
Heath, returning from a knee injury, came on for Rapinoe in a second-half triple substitution, moments after Rapinoe had hit a post from the top of the box. Heath had barely been on the field when she scored, same-post-and-in, from about 30 yards out to give her team a 3-0 lead.
“It was huge” to get back on the field, Heath said. “I didn’t know if I’d get back to this place, and obviously it took a lot of work.”
Christen Press added her second of the night, deflecting in a Tierna Davidson feed, late in the game just before the biggest deluge of the night, which only got the crowd rowdier.
Sam Mewis was involved in both first-half goals for the Americans. The midfielder finished the first, stepping up just inside the top of the box off her sister’s pass for a strike inside the right post.
Kristie Mewis said her sister texted in the afternoon that if they did pull off a sister-to-sister goal, they’d have to chest-bump.
“I had to remind her,” said Kristie Mewis, who said the sisters had around 40 people from home in the stands. “It’s just hilarious it actually happened that way.”
Sam Mewis ran past a defender to get the ball to Rapinoe for a left-to-right pass to set up Press late in the first half.