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The third season of Women’s Professional Soccer kicked off on Saturday, April 9 with the Atlanta Beat hosting the Boston Breakers, and the Philadelphia Independence traveling to Piscataway, New Jersey to take on Sky Blue FC the following day.

For the Atlanta Beat, things got off to the same old thing from last season. The Breakers handed them a 4-1 loss. Jordan Angeli opened the scoring in the 18th minute with the assist going to Kasey Moore. Five minutes later, rookie Keelin Winters scored her first WPS career goal. Kelley O’Hara then made it 3-0 in the 72nd minute. The Beat were able to get one back in the 76th when Carli Lloyd scored a penalty kick. Kasey Moore finished it off with a goal in stoppage time to make it 4-1.

Boston’s Angeli came off the field in the first half with a knee injury. Cat Whitehll had to play in goal again after Allison Whitworth was shown the red card for tackling Elli Reed about 25 yards out. It was that free kick that Moore took to finish off the scoring.

The first televised WPS game of the year showed a great comeback from the Philly Independence as they tied the game in stoppage time to ruin Sky Blue’s season-opening game at home.

Sky Blue took the lead when Laura Kalmari deflected a low cross from Brittany Taylor into the goal in the 18th minute. In the 36th minute, Casey Nogueira bent a perfect free kick into the upper left corner of the goal from the right side of the field, and the score was 2-0 in favor of Sky blue at half time.

The Independence came back with energy in the second half, and a lot of it had to do with Amy Rodriguez going into the game. Just 12 minutes into the half, Natasha Kai played a ball in behind the defense and Rodriguez was able to cut that deficit in half.

Philly pushed for an equalizer and finally got it in the first minute of stoppage time when the ball fell to Christina DiMartino inside the box. She curved her left-footer to the far post past Jenni Branam from inside the penalty box to end the game.

Next week will see all six teams of the league get play time including the magicJack and Western New York Flash debuts.

magiJack will start its season on the road as they take on Philadelphia at 7 pm ET on April 16 at Widener University.

Sky Blue will head down south to take on the Atlanta Beat at the same time on the same day at KSU Soccer Stadium.

Closing out the week will be the Boston Breakers-Western New York Flash game on FSC at 6 pm ET on Sunday.

~Alondra Hernandez

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