Denied in debut: Sporting Jax scores early, fades late in city's pro women's soccer opener

It was Jade Pennock's first shot for Sporting Club Jacksonville, and it felt perfect. It was.

"When the ball was sitting up in the air as I was going into the box, all I'm thinking is I just want to get it on frame," she said.

Saturday brought Jacksonville's first professional women's soccer club game, and its first goal. The first win will have to wait.

Pennock needed only seven minutes for a rocket goal to open Sporting Jax's women's soccer odyssey, but DC Power FC's Gianna Gourley got the upper hand with a slower one -- a sand-wedge chip for a game-winner -- to deny the First Coast's newest professional sports franchise 3-1 in its Aug. 23 Gainbridge Super League debut.

Sporting Jax commanded the first-half possession and scoring chances but not the numbers on the scoreboard, and that proved costly. DC Power (1-0-0) infrequently threatened to score, but when they did, Gourley finished ruthlessly, capping her night with a 25-yard go-ahead chip off a Sporting turnover in the 70th minute.

After three years of developing its United Soccer League franchise, and more than three hours waiting in the rain, the long-awaited first kick came at 9:59 p.m., when Kaitlyn Parks ventured forward from goalkeeper to boot the opening kickoff.

The clock read seven minutes when midfielder Meg Hughes aimed a pass into the penalty area for the right foot of Pennock, the club's oldest player at 32 with more than a half-dozen professional seasons in England and Australia. Ball struck crossbar, then back of net.

Then came Pennock spinning around in celebration with her Sporting Jax teammates, and the "Let's go, Sporting, let's go!" chants of the rain-drenched fans still inside the University of North Florida's Hodges Stadium. Jubilation.

But that wasn't the only chapter of the story.

Sporting's high defensive line and tenacious midfield pressure pinned the visitors deep for the first half: Caroline Murray and Hughes particularly raided the DC end from the wings and former Florida State midfielder Ashlyn Puerta pulled the strings from the center, nearly netting a goal-of-the-season candidate with a bending 30-yarder that curled just high. Yet all that pressure wasn't enough.

DC Power tied the game 30 minutes after Pennock's opener when Gourley put away a rebound, and the second-half brought a one-two punch of Gourley's chip and a Jaydah Bedoya counterattack in the 75th.

For an extremely young Sporting Jax lineup -- six of the starting 11 were making their pro debut -- there's still plenty to learn, and 27 more games in the Super League season to learn it.

Quick free kicks

Sporting Jax's first-ever lineup was goalkeeper Kaitlyn Parks; defenders Julia Lester, Georgia Brown and Grace Phillpotts; midfielders Caroline Murray, Sophia Boman, Ashlyn Puerta, Sophie Jones and Meg Hughes; and forwards Paige Kenton and Jade Pennock. … Former Sandalwood High School defender Madison Murnin played as a second-half substitute for the Power. … Before the starting eleven came the starting seventeen, a 17-strong crew armed with squeegees and blowers to clear the soggy remnants of a late-afternoon deluge that pushed back kickoff. … The club announced a sellout of the 9,400-ticket allocation earlier in the day, although only a fraction of those fans remained through more than three hours of rain.

Sporting Jax's next game

Sporting Jax next travels down the Sunshine State to the Tampa Bay Sun, an 8 p.m. kickoff on Aug. 30.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Sporting Jacksonville: Women's soccer debut vs. DC Power