ORLANDO, Fla. —The Orlando Pride are in newfound territory this week.
After one of the best regular seasons in NWSL history, the Pride find themselves getting ready to host their first-ever home playoff game this Friday night against the Chicago Red Stars at Inter&Co Stadium.
Before that, however, the Pride took the pitch for training on Wednesday morning, the first time this season they've had a pre-match training on the pitch they play on.
Since winning the NWSL Shield last month, every time the Pride have been on the pitch at Inter&Co Stadium, it's rained, a fact not lost on Head Coach Seb Hines. His first thought before he started his usual pre-match media availability was complaining about the torrential downpour he had just come out of. At this point, entering his 10th year of living in Orlando, it's just another day in the life of living in Florida.
"I think it's nice to get that pitch geography, get that feeling of what it feels like to play on the field, visualize these sort of scenarios," Hines said after training. "I'm a big believer in that. To have the opportunity to train here in our stadium, on the same field that we're going to be playing on Friday, is going to be important, and hopefully, it's the key to our success."
Before the training session, just as it started to rain, the team gathered for a team photo with their shiny new Tiffany & Co. trophy that they won back on Oct. 6. It almost served as a reminder of what the team has accomplished to this point, right as they head into what is essentially a new season.
That playoff mentality is new for the majority of this Pride team. Most of them haven't played in the postseason at the pro level, while others, such as Morgan Gautrat and Carson Pickett, have been on multiple playoff runs with other teams. The team has leaned on both of them, as well as Marta, who have all had that knockout-round experience, to help guide and advise the rest of the team in preparation for this new challenge.
Defender Emily Sams is only in her second year as a pro but has already had years of experience playing in knockout round games back in college at Florida State. The Seminoles ended up in the National Championship game in her fourth- and fifth-year seasons, with her final collegiate game ending with FSU winning the championship. One of the most important things she learned from that experience was that the goal they set at the beginning of the season was creating a mindset on winning the championship and making that the goal for the team. Just like at FSU, the Pride set that lofty goal back in January and now sit three games away from lifting a second trophy in 2024.
"We've come back to that at different points in the season and reminded ourselves that our big goals are to win the shield and to win the championship," Sams said after training. "We know that it's very serious and that if we don't perform well, we could possibly go home. But also knowing that Chicago's in the same boat, they're coming to our environment, they're in front of our fans, where we can control things and just know that we're the better team and that we can, if we play our best and play up to the standard that we want to, that we'll be the ones happy at the end of the game."
