The NWSL opens the weekend with a Friday night match between the Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit, but the most anticipated contests come Sunday.

Three storylines to watch

North Carolina Courage still searching for first win

After a loss to San Diego last weekend, the Courage are 0-0-3 to start the season after winning the Challenge Cup. In that time frame, they’ve scored just two goals, while their opponents have scored five.

This is a Courage team that can score goals – that much was proven during the Challenge Cup. But health and safety protocols combined with a level of fatigue from winning the preseason tournament has hindered their play thus far. As a result, they sit at the bottom of the standings with no points.

At some point, though, something has to give. Could North Carolina break through Sunday against the Houston Dash?

While Kerolin remains out with a sprained ankle suffered during the Challenge Cup final, other scorers like Debinha and Diana Ordoñez have the ability to step up and give the team a boost.

Houston, meanwhile, sits fourth in the NWSL standings with a record of 2-1-1 and seven points. The Dash are coming off of a 2-0 win over the Portland Thorns and could prove another tall test for the Courage.

Will San Diego continue to ride the wave?

Let’s be honest: Nobody expected San Diego and Angel City to top the table five weeks into the regular season. Except, maybe, for Jessa Braun.

San Diego has stood atop the standings for four weeks in a row and leads the league in goals with eight (Alex Morgan leads the individual race with six). The Wave are just the sixth NWSL team to win four of their first five games of the season and the previous five all advanced to the NWSL Championship. Foreshadowing?

While the season is long and a lot can happen between now and then, the strategy that Casey Stoney & Co. implemented ahead of the season appears to be paying off.

The Wave will face off against OL Reign this week, a team that just won its first game Wednesday. But despite the Reign’s early-season struggles, they’re not a team to count out. These two teams have already faced off twice, both in the group stage of the Challenge Cup. OL Reign won the first match 3-1 while the two split the second 1-1.

Expansion team: Minnesota?

As the talk around NWSL expansion continues to grow, so does the list of cities that could become hosts as soon as 2024.

While Salt Lake City is a possible destination, Grant Wahl also has reported that Atlanta, Austin, Cincinnati, Toronto, Columbus and San Francisco are interested.

There’s also an answer that could be right in front of the NWSL’s eyes: Minnesota.

Minnesota Aurora FC began play in the USL W League last night in front of a sold-out crowd of 5,219 fans at TCO Stadium. Before they even began play, the team had generated $650,000 in combined ticket, merchandise and sponsorship revenue and had to upgrade its budget. A publicly-owned team, the Aurora raised $1 million in funding ahead of their formation as a club.

Just watching Minnesota's new second-division women's soccer team play in front of a wildly enthusiastic sellout crowd bigger than what several NWSL teams draw. (Their jerseys are also much better!) https://t.co/F3RsguY6RA

— Molly Hensley-Clancy (@mollyhc) May 27, 2022

There’s also local support, if the fact that the team sold out its season tickets – all 3,000 of them – means anything.

“It was incredible,” head coach Nicole Lukic said of the support. “During warmups, you could just slowly kind of see everybody start trickling in. It was just becoming more and more packed, and then to hear the supporters’ groups and the chants and the drums, it was such a professional atmosphere, and I know our players just absolutely loved it.”

While there are a lot of logistics involved in bringing a semi-professional club up to the pro level, there is a blueprint for an NWSL club fielding a USL team: Racing Louisville, which is fielding its own USL club starting this season and is the first NWSL franchise to do so.

Week 5 Schedule

• Orlando Pride vs. Washington Spirit, Friday @ 7 p.m. ET
• Chicago Red Stars vs. Portland Thorns, Saturday @ 8 p.m. ET
• OL Reign vs. San Diego Wave, Sunday @ 3 p.m. ET
• Houston Dash vs. North Carolina Courage, Sunday @ 7 p.m. ET
• Angel City FC vs. NJ/NY Gotham FC, Sunday @ 8 p.m. ET
• Kansas City Current vs. Racing Louisville FC, Monday @ 3 p.m. ET

Caitlin Clark made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, which quickly went viral.

The Iowa star showed up on the show’s Weekend Update segment to playfully call out Michael Che’s history of making jabs at women’s sports.

It started when Che joked that Iowa should replace Clark’s retired No. 22 “with an apron.” 

When Clark entered, Che said that he was a fan. But Clark wasn’t convinced – especially not when co-host Colin Jost brought the receipts of Che’s jabs.

“Really, Michael? Because I heard that little apron joke you did,” she said, before making him read some jokes of her own in retaliation. Clark finished her segment by shouting out the WNBA greats that came before her. She then got in one final dig – bringing Che a signed apron as a souvenir. 

She’s got jokes 😎@CaitlinClark22 on @nbcsnl #Hawkeyes

pic.twitter.com/54khqQw2MR

— Iowa Women's Basketball (@IowaWBB) April 14, 2024

When Che promised to give it to his girlfriend, Clark delivered her last playful dig of the night.

“You don’t have a girlfriend, Michael,” she said.

Afterward, SNL castmember Bowen Yang told People that the 22-year-old and teammates Gabbie Marshall, Kate Martin and Jada Gyamfi – who joined her at Studio 8H – “were so cool.”

“She's so charming and witty,” Yang said. “They were just the most stunning, noble people.

“Athletes just have this air about them. They know they're amazing. I mean, these are people who have numeric attachments and values to their performance. That's something that comedians never have.”

The Portland Thorns continue to struggle to start the NWSL season, falling 2-0 to the North Carolina Courage over the weekend to remain winless through their first four games. 

It’s uncharted territory for Portland, who has never started the NWSL regular season without a win in four games before.

Following the loss, defender Becky Sauerbrunn voiced her frustrations with the start. 

“It’s hard to find a lot of encouraging things, but what I find encouraging is that people are frustrated,” she said. “People are pissed off that we’re not doing well. We care, and I think that’s really important.” 

She also added that while the team will reflect individually, “there’s going to be no finger pointing.”

“We’re going to look at ourselves and figure out what we should have done, or I should have done better,” she said. “There is a list of things that I could have done better, and I’m going to make sure I know every single thing and watch this game back.”

The Thorns currently sit at the bottom of the league table with just one point, having allowed 10 goals – tied for the worst in the league. They’ve yet to lead in a match. And as questions grow, attention turns to head coach Mike Norris. 

Norris is in his second year as head coach of the club after leading the team to a second-place finish in the regular season last year. When asked about the possibility of pressure growing after the unprecedented start, Norris said that the pressure has been there “from day one.”

“I cannot be driven by my day-to-day and the longer vision of the pressure of the job,” he said. “We’ve got a belief in how we want to play, how we operate. We’ve got to stick with the process of that. While we do it, we have to review and see what is working, what’s not working.

“I’ll be showing up for the team and being there for what they need from me as we approach getting back together as a group next week.”

Maria Sanchez, who signed one of the biggest deals in NWSL history just four months ago, has reportedly requested a trade from the Houston Dash. 

ESPN was the first to report the news, which was confirmed by multiple sources.

In a statement to ESPN, the team said: “​​Maria Sanchez is under contract, a choice she made in free agency at the end of 2023." 

In December, Sanchez signed a new three-year contract with the Dash worth $1.5 million including bonuses and an option year. At the time, it was the largest contract in NWSL history – something that was eclipsed by multiple contracts in the following months. 

The winger was a restricted free agent in the offseason, meaning that Houston could match any offer from another team and retain her rights. Should the team trade Sanchez, her contract would remain as it has been signed with the league. That limits the number of teams that could take on her contract. 

In three starts with the Dash this season, Sanchez has zero goals and an assist. The Dash are 1-2-1 through four games and have allowed a league-worst 10 goals.

The team hired a new coach, Fran Alonso, in December. Earlier this year, former goalkeeper coach Matt Lampson was fired for violating the league’s Coach Code of Conduct and Anti-Fraternization policy. 

Both the NWSL trade window and transfer window close at midnight ET on Friday.

Canada got its revenge on Sunday, winning the 2024 IIHF Women’s World Championship and taking down the U.S. in a 6-5 overtime classic.

Marie-Philip Poulin, a longtime star for Canada, got her first two goals of the tournament, while Danielle Serdachny had the game-winner. 

GOLD FOR CANADA! DANIELLE SERDACHNY WINS IT IN OVERTIME! #WomensWorlds pic.twitter.com/fHmqUmHoGw

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) April 15, 2024

"I hate to say you're not trying to rely on it, expect it, but I know I've grown to expect it," Canada coach Troy Ryan said of Philip-Poulin. "Tonight was just a whole other level. I could see in her eyes every time we called her name that she was ready to go. It's just special."

The win came after Canada lost 1-0 to the U.S. in the group stage of the tournament. On Sunday, the two teams met for the 22nd time in 23 tournaments in the gold medal game – and the action between the two teams delivered. 

Among those scoring for the U.S. were Megan Keller, Alex Carpenter, Hilary Knight, Laila Edwards and Caroline Harvey. Julia Gosling, Emily Clark and Erin Ambrose had the other three goals for Canada, giving them their 13th World title after falling to the U.S. in last year’s title game in Toronto. 

This year’s game was held in New York, and it was the second-highest scoring final between the two teams. The U.S. won a world championship 7-5 in 2015. 

"Oh man, that feels good to win it on U.S. soil," Canada goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens said after the game. "We owed it to them and owed it to ourselves to win that one."

Canada also denied Knight a record 10th World Championship win, although she did become the most decorated player in women’s world championship history with 14 medals. After the game, Poulin gave Knight a hug on the ice. 

"We just said 'that was unbelievable,'" Poulin said.

U.S. coach John Wroblewski echoed the sentiment that it was an outstanding game after being asked about ending the game on a power-play after leaving too many players on the ice. 

"Instead of talking about the isolated events of tonight's game, I think that normally that's an interesting storyline,” he said. “But I think the entity of an amazing 6-5 game is an amazing hockey game that took place."