The North Carolina Courage took down Kansas City 4-0 on Saturday, Aug. 21, playing out the final 15 minutes down a player after midfielder Havana Solaun picked up her second yellow in the 75th minute.

In the pre-match press conference, NC Courage head coach Paul Riley teased that “we might show you something a little different at the weekend,” following Lynn Williams’s return from international duty. When the lineup card dropped an hour before kickoff, it was clear that Riley wasn’t joking.

Instead of the usual 4-4-2 with a box midfield, Riley opted to start all three of Williams, Jessica McDonald and Amy Rodriguez up front, with Debinha, Denise O’Sullivan and Solaun forming a midfield trio behind them. Despite Merritt Mathias being listed as a midfielder on the team sheet, the Courage did go with their usual back four of Mathias, Kaleigh Kurtz, Abby Erceg and Carson Pickett.

Riley’s decision to run with the front three worked like a charm as all three members scored on the night. Despite all three scoring, Riley said it still wasn’t a great performance overall, adding that there’s room for them to improve.

“We’ll all admit we need a lot of work to play all three together,” Riley said. “It’s a work in progress, obviously. We only had a couple of days to work on this since Lynn has been back. I do think that there’s some potential in it. All three scored tonight so that’s a good sign for us… The performance wasn’t great. We never really got a grip of the midfield. That’s a problem sometimes when you go out of the system that we normally play. We lost a little bit of grip of the midfield. The passes were even throughout the game, but they outshot us pretty considerably.”

Just 12 minutes into her return from the Olympics, Williams reasserted herself at the top of league’s scoring charts, picking up her sixth goal of the season and pulling level with Washington’s Ashley Hatch and Orlando’s Sydney Leroux. 

“When you have probably the fastest woman in the league and the game, she’s going to make a big difference,” McDonald said. “She’s such a hard worker. She’s such a phenomenal player. She’s not all about speed. It’s her work rate overall that makes her such an incredible player.”

Less than 10 minutes later, McDonald got in on the scoring fun with a towering header in the 21st minute. The goal was McDonald’s 50th career regular season goal, making her just the fourth player to achieve that feat.

“[It feels] like I’m 50 years old,” McDonald said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

Snagging the assists on the first two goals, Pickett vaulted herself out of a logjam of players with three assists on the season to the standalone league leader with an assist to spare in less than half an hour.

Rodriguez completed the front-three trifecta in the 64th minute, blasting home a Ryan Williams cut back against her former team for her second Courage goal. 

Meredith Speck added a fourth in stoppage time, running away on the counter attack and rounding the keeper at midfield before slotting it into an open net.

“Those feel more stressful than the quick, don’t even think about it, kind of reactionary situations…” Speck said. “When I looked up, I felt like there was still enough space between the backline and the goal that I had the opportunity. It was on my weak foot, so I definitely did a double take. I just took a deep breath…. I went for it and fortunately it just got over the line.”

Over the last few games, Speck has played with a lot of confidence and really started to show the type of player she can be.

“She’s come into her own,” Riley said. “That’s really what she’s done. She’s been brilliant in practice for years and years and years, but now you’ve seen in the game. I think her energy when she came in changed the game in our favor. I think we were under a little bit of pressure when we made the sub. When she came in, I thought the game changed back towards us, the pendulum swung back. She was a massive difference in the game for me.”

While the Courage dominated the scoresheet, KC had its fair share of chances. As she has all season, Casey Murphy stood tall in the Courage goal, making nine saves. The clean sheet was Murphy’s league-leading seventh of the season and the Courage’s defense as a whole has helped to keep them in the race at the top of the table.

“We’ve been excellent around the penalty box,” Riley said. “Casey Murphy comes up with two or three big moments every game. I would like to reduce that from two or three to maybe zero to one…  It’s a whole group thing. You never you never get clean sheets just by the goalkeeper standing on her head. She’s had a great season so far. For me, she’s the MVP of our team so far.”

The Courage will be back in action on Sunday, Aug. 29 as they hit the road to take on the Washington Spirit at Audi Field.