The opening weeks of the 2024 season could hardly have gone better for the Orlando Pride.

One of only three unbeaten teams in NWSL, they have a chance to continue that streak Friday night in the nation’s capital.

The Pride (2-0-3, 9 points) take on the Washington Spirit (4-1-0, 12 points) at Audi Field.

Orlando’s last match against San Diego was a fine display of technical prowess and on-field dominance. The Pride have looked stronger as the season progresses, and they have still yet to field their best starting lineup.

The Spirit, however, sit second on the table and will be a serious test.

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“It’s a tough game. Washington [is] unbeaten in their last four with four wins. It’s a tough environment to go to, but we’re prepared. Every game has different challenges,” Pride coach Seb Hines said. “We know the threat that Washington have with the personnel that they have in that frontline, but we’ve got some dangerous players ourselves and it will be a good challenge for all of us and hopefully an entertaining game.”

Washington’s only loss was 1-0 to Seattle on opening weekend. Since then, the Spirit have won four in a row behind a potent attack led by rookie phenom Croix Bethune. Washington also has other threats such as USWNT starter Trinity Rodman.

Orlando will have its hands full on defense.

“Croix is a big one. She’s been super dangerous lately, but they have threats everywhere and we just need to be aware of that but also just play our game,” said Pride defender Haley McCutcheon. “I think valuing the ball is a big point for us and being clean in transition, connecting our first pass, that sort of thing is going to help not let them be dangerous because we have the ball.”

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Orlando will be without Simone Charley (season-ending injury — right leg), Megan Montefusco (SEI — right heel), Viviana Villacorta (SEI — left knee), Marta (lower leg) and Luana (excused absence). Morgan Gautrat (lower leg) and Adriana (leg) are questionable.

Up next

Pride at Spirit

When: Friday at Audi Field

How to watch: Bally Sports Sun, NWSL+, 7:30 p.m.

Pat O’Hara has been immersed in football as a quarterback and coach at various levels for more than four decades.

An NFL Draft pick out of the University of Southern California, O’Hara will continue coaching the intricacies of the game in Orlando after spending the past nine years as an assistant with the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans.

O’Hara, 55, has launched QB Tactical, a local training and consulting company geared toward teaching, developing and inspiring the next generation of quarterbacks.

“I’ve been a starter. I’ve been benched. I’ve been hired. I’ve been fired,” O’Hara told the Orlando Sentinel late last week. “I’ve broken bones and come back from them, and been cut and been traded. I’ve learned a ton over the years.”

He’s also played on three ArenaBowl championship teams with the Orlando Predators and Tampa Bay Storm during an 11-year career in the Arena Football League.

That was after being drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 10th round in 1991 and spending time with the San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins and Ohio Glory of the World League of American Football.

Then came his work in the entertainment industry with Game Changing Films, where he helped consult, coordinate and choreograph football movies that include Any Given Sunday, The Waterboy and The Longest Yard.

All of this despite not starting a single college football game because of a severe knee injury that ended his junior season before it even began.

“There’s just a lot of experiences I’ve had,” O’Hara said. “It’s the football wisdom and life wisdom I hope will be able to help a lot of young people as it relates to their age level. My goal is just to help kids out.”

O’Hara started working with young athletes as a high school football assistant during the AFL offseason in 1998 at New Smyrna Beach. He coached at Olympia from 2001-03 and later inspired his own children’s love for the game as they grew up in east Orange County.

Tyler and Trace O’Hara were football teammates at East River High in 2017. Tyler went on to play NAIA football as a quarterback at Waldorf University in Iowa. Trace graduated in December from UCF, where he was a scout-team player at defensive end.

They’ve seen their dad’s coaching carousel play out as an AFL head coach with the Preds and New Orleans VooDoo from 2010-14 and the jobs that followed with the Texans and Titans.

O’Hara worked as an offensive assistant assigned to quarterbacks in Houston before becoming an assistant QB coach in his third year. He spent five seasons as the QB coach in Tennessee until last year when he took over as passing game analyst.

“The preparation has always been with the quarterbacks,” O’Hara said. “I understand the level of what that takes from a leadership standpoint, from a daily routine. Not just the drills itself and the techniques, which I feel comfortable doing, but also the ability to mentor young people all the way from middle school to pro.”

Several former players from his arena league days are now part of the coaching profession, including Preds quarterbacks Nick Hill and Collin Drafts and offensive lineman Chris Jamison, who is an Edgewater assistant.

Hill is entering his ninth season as a college head coach at Southern Illinois. Drafts, who coached Tyler O’Hara as an East River junior, is the head coach at Nease High in Ponte Vedra, where former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow won a state championship in 2005.

“Pat was a player’s coach. Guys loved playing for him because he was super organized and he got it, he had been in our shoes,” Drafts said. “He was always even-keeled during games, even if you made a mistake. He never got riled up and beat you down in those moments. It was, ‘Let’s go on to the next play,’ and I always respected that as a player.”

New Orlando Predators head coach E.J. Burt, a former Preds lineman, has turned to O’Hara for guidance while preparing his team for its return to the AFL. The Predators open the season on the road vs. the Albany Firebirds on Saturday at 8 p.m. on NFL Network.

“I’m proud of all those guys. It’s been cool to see how they’ve grown,” O’Hara said. “I hope some of their interactions with me as a player helped with their development in some way or another.”

It’s a similar mindset he’s taking into the launch of QB Tactical.

“I’ve been playing or coaching the position since I was nine years old and evolving with the trends and changes,” O’Hara said. “There are some real-life skills you need to have as a quarterback. It’s not just throwing the football and completing passes. There’s a whole aspect of leadership and preparation. There’s a whole aspect of being the same guy every day.”

This article originally appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email J.C. Carnahan at jcarnahan@orlandosentinel.com.

In the eighth inning of Thursday’s series finale against San Diego, the Rockies’ offense transformed into the Big Purple Machine.

Colorado batted around in that frame to erase a five-run deficit, plating six runs in the process. After closer Justin Lawrence cemented the team’s largest comeback of the season with a save in the ninth, the result was a signature moment of positivity amid a spring full of struggles.

Yes, the Rockies (7-19) have still yet to win a series in eight tries after splitting with San Diego, surpassing last season’s futility in that regard. But Thursday provided a glimmer of hope and some signs that maybe, just maybe, this year’s team will avoid the 100-loss mark again.

Rookie right fielder Hunter Goodman highlighted the rally with a monster homer, his first of the year, while Brenton Doyle and Brendon Rodgers both had knocks in the inning to cap three-hit days for each player.

Colorado starter Daniel Hudson was bad, giving up six runs on six hits and four walks through 3 1/3 innings. And the offense, which showed early life, disappeared in the middle part of the game before re-emerging with a bang in the eighth.

The Rockies struck first when Doyle singled, got to third on a hit by Ryan McMahon, and then scored on Elias Diaz’s sacrifice fly. But the Padres got that run back the next inning, when Luis Campusano led off with a single and then eventually scored on a groundout by José Azócar.

Both teams then put up three runs apiece in an eventful third inning.

The Padres’ half of the frame was highlighted by a leadoff double by Fernando Tatís Jr., who scored on Jurickson Profar’s single. Then, Ha-Seong Kim blasted a homer to left, turning on Hudson’s fastball to extend San Diego’s lead to 4-1. That inning’s output extended Colorado’s streak of trailing in each of its first 26 games this year, the longest MLB streak to start a season since the 1910 St. Louis Browns trailed in 28 straight games.

In the bottom of the inning, the Rockies retaliated with Diaz’s RBI groundout to score Ezequiel Tovar, followed by Elehuris Montero’s two-run bomb to left that tied the game at 4-4.

San Diego retook the lead off Hudson on Xander Bogaerts’ RBI double in the fourth, and after Peter Lambert replaced Hudson, Jake Cronenworth’s sacrifice fly made it 6-4.

After a scoreless fifth and sixth, Profar poured some salt in the wound in the seventh with a two-run homer to right off Nick Mears. The former Rockie watched his 405-foot no-doubter fly, then flipped his bat high in the air before trotting around the bases to give the Padres an 8-4 lead.

San Diego tacked on another run off Tyler Kinley in the eighth via Eguy Rosario’s RBI single. The game appeared to be in the books as the Padres held a 9-4 advantage entering the eighth.

But then the Rockies’ offense resurrected.

After Yuki Matsui yielded a walk and a double, he was replaced by Wandy Peralta, who promptly gave up a 448-foot blast to the recently recalled Goodman to left-center. Jacob Stallings and Tovar kept the train going with a single and a walk, respectively, before Doyle continued his hot day by singling Stallings home.

Tovar then scored on a passed ball to even the score 9-9, but Colorado wasn’t done. Stephen Kolek came on for San Diego, and the right-hander gave up a double to Diaz to give Colorado a 10-9 lead.

Colorado now heads to Mexico City for a two-game set with the Astros this weekend, followed by three-game road series in Miami and Pittsburgh. The Rockies return to Coors Field on May 7, for a six-game homestand against the Giants and reigning World Series champion Rangers.