Hello, hello everyone and welcome to the Total Soccer show.

My name is Joe Lowry, and on today's show, we're talking all about the NWSL.

We're going to recap the Challenge Cup.

We're going to talk about teams and players and some strategy stuff,

and we're going to talk about the early stages of the regular

season as well. Joining me to do all of that is my wonderful guest, Ariana Cascon. Ariana writes about

the NWSL for Backheel.com, a new website covering American soccer. Ariana, thank you so much for coming

on the show. How are you? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm doing well.

Good, good. I am super excited to have you on today. I've been really enjoying getting to work with you and read some of the stuff you put out at Backhield, and I'm really excited for us to have the chance here on TSS to talk about some NWSL stuff. So let's let's dive right into that. We're a couple of weekends into the regular season. The Challenge Cup has already come and gone. And that's where I want to start. It just finished up over the weekend with the North Carolina courage, beating the Washington Spirit 2-1 in the final in North Carolina. You were there. Ariana, that's where you live. You went to that game, you watched it. What was it like being there in person for the final?

And what did you make of the game? Yeah, I had a ton of fun at the game. I'm really glad that I was able to get down to carry.

It was a great atmosphere. Honestly, I was a little shocked that North Carolina pulled off getting a little over 3,000 people in the stadium on less than three days notice. I know that the, you know,

the coaches and they were on social media really trying to give tickets away, basically. So

it seemed like they pulled off what they were going for. I thought that the game was great. I mean,

I think the courage and the spirit really put on a great show. I thought those were the teams that

granted the way that Washington maybe got to the final was a little controversial. I think, you know, regardless, they were able to put on a really good showing. I do feel like much of the reporting has been focused on maybe, you know, the last 20 minutes or so of the game. But, but, you know, up until that point, it was just really fun soccer to watch it was it was a

good game and you and i messaged a little bit about it during the game caroline especially for

north carolina causing some problems in debina absolutely dusting u.s women's national team defender

kelly o'hara on on the right side for the spirit and the left side for the courage it was a fun game

and of course a really unfortunate injury to j Baggett in the latter stages of that game

that was just handled really poorly by NWSL and the folks there when the medical staff and all

of all of those things. But she was able to talk to some of those staff members as she was

stretched off the field. So that certainly is a positive.

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