Two red cards against Portland threatened to derail its home opener against their fiercest rival, but the Thorns fought back and posted a 2-0 victory against the Seattle Reign despite being shorthanded for most of the match.
A player down for nearly 80 minutes, Portland scored two first half goals to beat Seattle. Pietra Tordin scored in the 28th minute then set up Reilyn Turner’s goal less than 10 minutes later for the Thorns, which improved to 2-0 under new head coach Robert Vilahamn.
“I’ve heard so much about this stadium, the fan base and this club and to experience it was amazing,” Vilahamn said after his first home game.
Vilahamn joined the Thorns just prior to the March 13 season opener after his hiring was formalized on March 4. The 43-year-old Swede’s wife and children are still in Europe, and he said they were watching the game in the middle of the night at home.
“It’s hard to understand in the moment how important this is for your career,” he said of registering his first home win with the team against Seattle. “There’s still a lot of adrenaline and everything, but tomorrow I’ll be really happy and proud of what we have done today.”
In her home debut as a Thorn, 20-year-old midfielder Cassandra Bogere earned two quick yellow cards in the 8th and 9th minutes to be sent off and temporarily deflate a Providence Park crowd of 21,321, the largest for a home opener in team history. On both fouls, Bogere appeared to grab the arm of a Seattle player and pull them toward the turf.
Bogere looked stunned as she left the field, but Vilahaman said he won’t “judge a player that makes a mistake.”
“We’re going to have good clips to show her how to manage duels in these big games,” he said. “This was one of the biggest games she’s ever played in and she will learn through it. Her teammates stepped up and supported her during the game and afterward. I’m not really sure the second one was clearly a yellow but you have to be smart from the first one and make sure you don’t end up in a risky situation.”
The first goal came on a corner kick, with Olivia Moultrie sending a hard delivery into traffic in front of the net that Tordin got to first and directed inside the far post past helpless Seattle goalkeeper Claudia Dickey.
On the second, Moultrie initiated a quick counterattack by playing the ball ahead to Tordin, whose pass split two defenders into the path of a streaking Turner, who fired a shot past Dickey for a 2-0 lead in the 37th minute.
The task of protecting the lead in the second half got tougher when defender Reyna Reyes was issued a straight red card in the 57th minute for pulling the hair of Seattle’s Madison Curry after a video review. As Reyes went airborne for a header, she reached out apparently to use Curry as leverage for her jump but ended up grabbing a handful of Curry’s ponytail, which was ruled as violent conduct.
That forced the Thorns to hunker down and fend off the Reign for more than a half hour while down to nine players. The Reign possessed the ball in Portland’s half for most of the remainder of the match, but the Thorns defense held firm and largely prevented dangerous scoring chances. The Reign sent 17 shots toward the Portland net but only four were on goal.
Portland goalkeeper Morgan Messner made four saves for her second consecutive shutout to begin the season.
Tordin said the team had reached a “flow state” that made the group feel like they weren’t shorthanded:
“I don’t think I’ve been down two players ever in my life,” she said “It’s not something you train for, it’s just something you have to fight when you’re in there.”
Vilahamn noted that the team has a contingency plan for one red card, but not for two. It was only the fifth time in NWSL history that a team received two red cards in the same match, and the first time for the Thorns in the regular season.
“The good thing is the players kept having bravery on the ball,” he said.
Portland goalkeeper Morgan Messner made four saves for her second consecutive shutout to begin the season and her NWSL career. Though Messner was on the roster for the Thorns last year and San Diego the year before, these two games were her first appearances in the regular season due to the absence of Mackenzie Arnold (international duty) and Bella Bixby (season-ending injury).
“If you saw this game, you would guess she had played several years,” Vilahamn said. “She’s handling the game so well.”
Portland’s Sophia Wilson made her first home appearance for the team since November 2024, coming on as a substitute in the 59th minute. Wilson, the club’s leading goal scorer for four straight seasons before missing all of 2025 on maternity leave, didn’t have many opportunities to put her attacking skills on display with the Thorns down two players.
The Thorns last played the Reign in a home-opener in 2013, the NWSL’s inaugural season. With the league adding teams in Boston and Denver this year, Portland will play a 30-game schedule for the first time, facing each of the other 15 clubs once at home and once on the road.
Portland travels to San Diego for its next match against the Wave on Wednesday.
