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The Charge battle the Red Stars on a rainy night

For 45 minutes Paul Riley looked like a prophet after predicting “they get somebody on the wrong day, they’ll beat them” about the Chesapeake Charge downing one of the WPSL Elite’s WPS-heritage teams. As their coach yelled at them about laziness and turning the ball over, the Chicago Red Stars were forcing the ball, not using the width of the field, and wasting the chances they did get: crosses went high, headers went wide, close-in free kicks went off-target – and Chesapeake was taking advantage. “In the first half, everybody was working hard, we were all getting stuck in, we were all on the same page,” Charge midfielder Amanda Lebo observed.

Unfortunately for Chesapeake, their best regular attacking player, Alexis Prior-Brown, was out after being injured the previous week, while their star offensive threats Laura Kane and Christine Nairn were once again unavailable. So even though the Charge were outplaying the opposition they had nothing to show for it. That changed in the 23rd minute as Chesapeake midfielder Erica Suter was taken down from behind in the penalty area as she went in toward goal. Jess Hnatiuk stepped up to take the penalty kick and put it to the left of Chicago goalkeeper Jamie Forbes. It was the first goal the Charge had scored against any of the top teams in the Elite league.

Charge captain Jess Hnatiuk puts a penalty kick away against Red Stars goalkeeper Jamie Forbes

That gave a lift to the Charge that kept them going into halftime with a 1-0 lead. It didn’t last long, though. As Lebo observed, “We made a few changes going into the second half, and I think it just took us a while to get back to all being on the same page.” Meanwhile, the Red Stars came out with former national team star Lori Chalupny pushed up top, and with renewed determination. “We just came out with more energy, “ Michele Weissenhofer said.

Weissenhofer would score the first goal straight off the initial possession from the second-half kickoff, as she sent in an angled shot from the left. Three minutes later, she’d send in a cross that Chalupny would put away to give Chicago the lead.

The game was stopped in the 57th minute due to lightning in the vicinity. It rained as well, though never more than moderately. It took close to an hour for the field manager to certify that there’d been no lightning for at least twenty minutes. Neither side thought it affected them. Lebo, one of the older players on a very young Chesapeake team, said her reaction was, “I get a break? Yes!” Chalupny and Weissenhofer just said, “It cooled it off.”

A battle for a header

The Red Stars controlled the run of play after the long break but by and large couldn’t take advantage of it, thanks in part to an impressive performance from Charge goalkeeper Lyndse Hokanson, who in the 76th minute made one of the most stunning saves I’ve ever seen. It was a textbook attack: go for the right post with the ball and get the goalkeeper’s attention, then at the last second pass to a teammate at the left post who’ll have an open net to shoot into. You could see it coming, you could hear Hokanson or another Charge player shout something I can’t repeat here, but then somehow she managed to get clear across the goalmouth in time to grab the shot.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught as in the next minute Chicago midfielder Laura Allkek sent in a cross from the left to the feet of Weissenhofer, who one-touched it in.

With about six minutes to go, the Charge had a golden opportunity as they sent a through ball in. Everyone gave up on it, though, as it looked to have too much pace on it, but then the sodden turf slowed it down. By the time the players figured that out, it was too late.

With the result came the last opportunity for the Charge to get points off of one of the better WPSL Elite teams at home, though they still have to play all of them but Chicago (New York, Boston, and Western New York) on the road. On the other hand, they have yet to host any of the lesser teams (Indiana, New England, Philadelphia), which should give them a good chance of picking up some standings points and ending the season on a positive note.

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