On June 7th, Bay FC pulled out a 1-0 victory over the Portland Thorns to move into the eighth and final playoff spot in the NWSL standings. Since then, they haven’t won a league match while steadily falling down the standings into 13th place. On Friday night, Bay FC hosted the North Carolina Courage in their home finale, still looking for that elusive next victory.
Their luck didn’t change: Bay conceded two goals in the first eight minutes and, despite fighting the entire match, ultimately lost 4-1 to the Courage on Friday night.
“It’s actually been 133 days, I think, since our last win,” noted Bay FC midfielder Tess Boade after the game. “So it’s been long, it’s been a lot, and it’s been incredibly hard.”
Friday night’s loss was very different from many of the results Bay FC has endured during its four-plus-month winless streak. Usually, they are right in the game until the final whistle.
But two early North Carolina goals from Manaka Matsukubo in the third and eighth minutes immediately put Bay FC on the back foot. For most of the remainder of the first half, it looked like the Courage were about to net their third and put the game out of reach. However, Bay FC striker Penelope Hocking, still returning from an injury that spanned most of her club’s winless streak, headed home a goal in the 45th minute off a corner kick to give the Bay a spark of hope and pull them to 2-1 at the break.
In the second half, Racheal Kundananji came into the game and immediately sprang Bay’s attack into high gear. For twenty minutes, it looked like they were going to tie the match.
Bay’s best chances came in the 64th, 65th, and 67th minutes. First, Tess Boade found herself unmarked at the top of the penalty box, but Courage keeper Casey Murphy pushed the ball just wide of the goal.
On the ensuing corner kick, Hannah Bebar’s toe poke went off the crossbar.
And then two minutes later, Kundananji got free on a ball over the top. It looked like her shot was bound for the back of the net. But Murphy was able to get the slightest of touches on the ball, and it instead deflected off the far post and back onto the field.
Against the run of play, North Carolina put the game to bed with a quick combination of passes that ultimately led to Shinomi Koyama’s goal in the 74th minute. It restored the Courage’s two-goal lead and deflated the 13,519 fans at PayPal Park. Matsukubo completed her hat trick in the 80th minute for the final 4-1 scoreline.
After the game, Bay FC head coach Albertin Montoya, who announced several weeks ago that he is stepping down after the season, conceded that the third goal was a bit of a dagger and a microcosm of the struggle the team has endured throughout the second half of a season that hasn’t gone Bay FC’s way.
“I’m more frustrated for the players because I know how hard they work. I know how much time they put into trying to be successful out on the field,” said Montoya. “So you want that for them, because we’ve been so close in the games. So that’s really what makes it more challenging than anything else.”
And now it’s up to Bay FC to end the season on a winning note with its final game against Racing Louisville on the road after the international break.
“Every pro league has a few teams every year that you just get stuck behind losing, and it’s hard to dig out unless you’ve been in it,” said Boade. “Each week, we tried something new, maybe a different thing in the lineup, maybe we had a culture, maybe this, maybe that, and I think we just threw a lot of darts at the wall, and it was frustrating that not one really stuck. But I think what did stick is the group and the belief to keep trying, which, for me, I feel proud of that.”
