As much as the San Diego Wave want the National Women’s Soccer League to grow in popularity, they’re not apologetic about dumping cold water on so many opponents away from Snapdragon Stadium last year.
For paying customers in seven cities, it wasn’t great entertainment — the Wave shutting out the home team and sometimes never allowing even a firm shot on goal in the 90 minutes.
For the Wave, it was a hoot.
The seven shutouts away from San Diego netted five victories and two ties, while driving the second-year franchise to the league’s best road record and a first-round bye in the playoffs.
“We were really proud of that,” Wave defender Kristen McNabb said Friday of earning a league-high 20 road points. “That’s kind of attributed to how much we speak about how vital road games are, and how we treat them and our process going into it.
“It’s going to be important to grow on that from last year. We’ve already had a couple of meetings about little details and stuff, on the field and off the field, of how we treat road trips.”
Saturday’s match at Racing Louisville FC will open the road schedule for a Wave club that split two March matches in San Diego.
At Louisville last June, the Wave frustrated an announced crowd of 6,753 by walling off the home offense for most of the scoreless match.
The Wave took the punch bowl away at several other road venues in front of bigger crowds.
In New Jersey they shut out Gotham FC, the eventual NWSL champion, before a club-record, announced turnout of 15,058 as Makenzy Doniak’s goal stood as the winner. They blanked the defending-champion Portland Thorns before a listed 19,947, securing a 2-0 win. Bumming out the majority of a reported capacity crowd of 22,000 in Los Angeles, the Wave smothered Angel City en route to the 2-0 victory.
Louisville’s Uchenna Kanu will command extra attention. The Nigerian forward has scored three goals in her club’s three matches, all ties.
Allowing a team’s top scorer to rev up a home crowd isn’t something the Wave typically do.
A year ago they shut out Portland’s Sophia Smith, the league’s scoring champion, and North Carolina’s Kerolin, the league’s MVP.
“The back line is going to have to continue what we’ve been doing — stay really compact and be hard to beat and hard to get scored on,” McNabb said.
Defender Naomi Girma’s thigh injury sustained April 6 looms as perhaps the Wave’s biggest challenge. Girma left in the 17th minute of the U.S. National Team’s 2-1 win over Japan. She sat out the Americans’ victory Tuesday against Canada in which the Wave’s Alex Morgan, Jaedyn Shaw, Abby Dahlkemper and Kailen Sheridan all logged 63 to 90-plus minutes.
Wave coach Casey Stoney said she doesn’t know if Girma will be available Saturday.
