Orlando Pride
Orlando Pride is a professional women's soccer team based in Orlando, Florida, competing in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Established in 2016, it is the league's tenth team and plays its home matches at Exploria Stadium. The team's colors, purple and light blue, reflect the legacy of the former Orlando Lions Football Club and the local Lake Eola geyser. Orlando Pride has seen varying success since its inception, qualifying for the NWSL Playoffs once in 2017 and finishing in the top half of the league only a few times.
The team has been home to several notable athletes, including multiple World Cup winners like Alex Morgan and Marta, who have helped elevate the profile of women's soccer in the U.S. The club has also experienced ownership changes, with the Wilf family acquiring it in 2021. Throughout its history, Orlando Pride has fostered a supportive fan community, with groups such as The Crown and the Black Swans Drinking Club, which contribute to the team’s vibrant atmosphere. Additionally, the team has navigated challenges, including addressing issues related to player safety and misconduct within the league.
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Orlando Pride
Team information
Inaugural season: 2016
Home field: Exploria Stadium
Owner: Mark Wilf, Zygi Wilf, Lenny Wilf
Team colors: Purple, blue, white
Overview
Orlando Pride is a women’s professional soccer team based in Florida. It is in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). The club’s purple and light blue colors pay tribute to the defunct Orlando Lions Football Club; purple is a color associated with the Orlando City club, while the light blue, known as Eola blue, represents the Lake Eola water geyser. The NWSL club’s name, Pride, is a reference to the lions of the former team. Orlando is notable for being the tenth team in the NWSL, which is the third major US women’s professional soccer league, and is a member of the group that also includes the Orlando City men’s professional soccer club. It counts among its players several multiple-World Cup competitors.
History
The United States has dominated women’s soccer for decades. This came about in part because of Title IX, the 1972 US law that prohibits American educational institutions that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. Before it went into effect, women and girls had few opportunities to play team sports, but in the years that followed, schools and universities added basketball, swimming, hockey, soccer, and other sports teams for women and girls. In contrast, many other countries including Brazil banned women from playing soccer. The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) instituted a World Cup championship for women in 1991, staging the event every four years in various countries. The US national team has won the 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cups.
By 1991, more than 120,000 women in the United States were playing high school soccer. Interest in the sport grew considerably through the decade, and was especially high in 1999 because the Women’s World Cup soccer championship was hosted by the United States. More than ninety thousand fans attended the final match at Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California, the largest crowd ever to attend a women’s sporting event, while an estimated forty million Americans watched on television. The 1999 US Women’s National Team won the championship and overnight many of its key players, including Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain, and Mia Hamm, became well-known names.
The NWSL was preceded by two other US women’s soccer leagues, Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) and Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS). WUSA was funded in part by Comcast with expectations of corporate sponsorships and built around the twenty athletes of the 1999 world championship team. Its first season took place in 2001 and its last games were played in 2004. WPS’s seven teams played their first season in 2009 and shut down in early 2012. NWSL was founded that year with eight teams in Western New York, Kansas City, Portland, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, New York/New Jersey, and Washington, DC. The league began play with the 2013 season and added a ninth team in Houston the following year. From 2013 until 2020, US Soccer, which had been involved in founding the league, supported the NWSL.
Orlando Pride is the tenth team in the league. Brazilian entrepreneur Flávio Augusto da Silva took control of the Orlando City men’s franchise in 2013 when it was playing in the United Soccer League. He paid the Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion fee of $70 million in 2015 and self-financed construction of Exploria Stadium. In light of tremendous interest in the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, Orlando City SC began negotiating for a NWSL expansion. By the end of the year, the league had awarded a franchise to the Florida city.
Pride played its inaugural season in 2016, ending up in ninth place of the league’s ten teams with 6 wins, 1 draw, and 13 losses. Of its first six seasons, it finished in the top half of the league only once, in 2017, when it was ranked third with an 11-7-6 record and qualified for the NWSL Playoffs for the first time. It reached the semifinals, where the club fell to the Portland Thorns.
The club played no matches in the regular season in 2020 during the global COVID-19 pandemic but competed in the league Fall Series, a tournament held when the league was able to resume competition following lockdown. Orlando notched 2 draws and 2 losses in the event. NWSL decided to make the tournament pitting the Eastern and Western divisions an annual event, dubbing it the Challenge Cup. In 2021 Orlando finished third in the Eastern Division and eighth overall. In 2022 Orlando reached the 2022 MLS Cup Playoffs but was eliminated in the first round by CF Montreal.
Augusto da Silva said he planned to sell a majority stake in the club by its eighth season so he could focus on philanthropy. He sold small stakes in the club gradually. In 2018 Canadian businessperson Albert Friedberg bought 8.63 percent of Orlando Sports Holdings LLC. Jed Kaplan, a part owner of other professional sports teams, also purchased a share of the club. In July 2021 the Wilf family purchased the Pride, Orlando City Soccer Club of Major League Soccer, Exploria Stadium, and other assets including training facilities and the clubs’ youth soccer systems from Orlando Sports Holdings LLC. The managing partners of the clubs, brothers Mark and Zygi Wilf and their cousin, Lenny Wilf, were real estate businesspersons and owners of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. The DeVos family, owners of the Orlando Magic basketball team, were minority shareholders. Two days after the ownership change, Coach Marc Skinner left to take another job.
The league was rocked in 2021 by allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and other abuse of players. Some changes in leadership of the NWSL were made. Orlando chair Mark Wilf vowed to ensure the club protected the players and pledged to hold league leadership to high standards in this regard. In November the club announced it was parting ways with its executive vice president, Amanda Duffy, a former NWSL league president.
Orlando Pride’s first Recognized Supporter Group (RSG) is The Crown, which was established in 2016 prior to the start of its inaugural season. Another supporter group is the Black Swans Drinking Club, which was recognized in 2019.
Notable players
Goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris was a member of the first Orlando squad and remained with the club until 2021 when she was traded to Gotham FC. She broke the league’s all-time save record in August 2021 and served as team captain since 2016. Top scorers were forward Kristen Edmonds in 2016 with 6; Canadian forward Sydney Leroux with 6 goals in 2018 and 8 in 2021; and Marta Vieira da Silva, a midfielder from Brazil who goes by her first name only, with 13 in 2017 and 6 in 2019. Leroux was ranked fifth in the league for goals, tied with two other athletes.
Alex Morgan is highly regarded for her accomplishments since she joined the league until she signed with the San Diego Wave in 2021. She played for the Portland club for three seasons and was the franchise’s top player when she was traded to Orlando in 2016. Her husband, Servando Carrasco, was already with Orlando City SC. She also played for Lyon in the Champions League and in the Women’s Super League for Tottenham in England. Morgan is a two-time World Cup winner. She first played for the US Women’s National Team in 2011 at the World Cup when she was twenty-two. She is among the top goal scorers in US soccer, having reached the one hundred mark in 2019. She competed in the Olympic Games in 2012, 2016, and the delayed 2020 Games, collecting a gold medal in London and a bronze in Tokyo. Among her many career awards, she is a 2013 league champion and two-time US Soccer Federation Female Athlete of the Year.
In 2019 Morgan was one of three Pride athletes named to the US World Cup team. Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger also joined the team. For Morgan and Krieger, this was the third trip to the international competition, while this was Harris’s second. Six other players were tapped for their national teams: Shelina Zadorsky for Canada, Claire Emslie for Scotland, Alanna Kennedy and Emily van Egmond for Australia, and Marta and Camila Martins Pereira for Brazil. Marta left the tournament with a ball awarded to her for breaking the record for most goals, women’s and men’s, in World Cup history. The US women’s team won its fourth World Cup. Following this victory, Pride drew 9,415 fans, its largest crowd since the 2017 home opener. Other NWSL clubs saw similar attendance boosts.
Bibliography
“2021 Orlando Pride States (NWSL).” FB Ref, Oct. 2021, fbref.com/en/squads/2a6178ac/Orlando-Pride-Stats. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
Equalizer Staff. “What’s in a Name, Logo? Orlando Pride’s Story.” The Equalizer, 20 Oct. 2015, equalizersoccer.com/2015/10/20/orlando-pride-logo-name-derivation-nwsl/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
Haas, Johanna. “How Every NWSL Team Got Its Name.” Girls Soccer Network, 15 Apr. 2021, girlssoccernetwork.com/nwsl-team-names/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
Murray, Caitlin. “Portland Thorns Fall to Orlando Pride After Stunning Alex Morgan Strike, Defensive Errors.” Oregon Live, 26 May 2021, www.oregonlive.com/portland-thorns/2021/05/portland-thorns-fall-to-orlando-pride-after-stunning-alex-morgan-strike-defensive-errors.html. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
“Orlando Pride Stats and History.” FB Ref, Oct. 2021, fbref.com/en/squads/2a6178ac/history/Orlando-Pride-Stats-and-History. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
Poe, Julia. “Orlando Pride Owner Mark Wilf Pledges Commitment to Change Amid NWSL Upheaval.” Orlando Sentinel, 21 Oct. 2021, www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-pride-soccer/os-sp-orlando-pride-owner-mark-wilf-pledges-change-nwsl-upheaval-20211021-6zzdbggddnf4fk36vjehqxalza-story.html. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
Tracy, Jeff. “Two NWSL Teams Searching for New Head Coaches After Abuse Allegations.” Axios, 25 Nov. 2021, www.axios.com/nwsl-offseason-coach-washington-chicago-3e0b913f-b879-4aa6-9c05-82e78229fd17.html. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.
“Wilf Family Completes Purchase of Orlando City Soccer Club and Orlando Pride.” Orlando City Soccer Club, 21 July 2021, www.orlandocitysc.com/news/wilf-family-completes-purchase-of-orlando-city-soccer-club-and-orlando-pride. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021.