ORLANDO, Fla. — In a city long-starved for a big-time professional sports championship, one amazing team finally delivered — not just a trophy, but a transcendent turning point.
The Pride didn’t just win a championship in 2024, they gave Orlando a front-row seat to the growing power, promise and prestige of women’s sports.
This is what makes Pride players, coaches and the entire organization worthy finalists for the Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year award.
It is only fitting that this team is called the Pride because that’s exactly what they’ve become for this city — a source of unwavering admiration and inspiration. They played with resolve and resilience and overcame a history of chaos and mediocrity to give Orlando something it had never accomplished before: a major professional sports championship.
The only pro championships Orlando has ever experienced have been on the minor league level. The Solar Bears have won championships in the ECHL and the Predators won a couple of ArenaBowl titles, but never have we had a team win a trophy at the top level of its sport. And the National Women’s Soccer League is undeniably the top women’s professional soccer league on the planet.
And to think, it wasn’t that long ago that NWSL and the Pride were a mess. Despite having some of the greatest players in the sport’s history — Marta and Alex Morgan — the Pride were a revolving door of defeat and dysfunction.
“They were always a team that had a lot of really good players who couldn’t figure it out on the field.” said midfielder Morgan Gautrat, an NWSL veteran and a member of the U.S. Women’s National Team who joined the Pride before last season. “Players were always constantly coming and then leaving. From the outside looking in, this wasn’t a place you wanted to be.”
The Pride as a franchise and the NWSL as a league reached its moment of reckoning in 2021: a league-wide abuse scandal that resulted in the commissioner and half of the league’s coaches getting fired. The Pride were not immune. First-year coach Amanda Cromwell was suspended and ultimately fired for what was described as a toxic culture of fear and retaliation.
And into this storm stepped a soft-spoken but quietly powerful leader: Seb Hines.
“It was obviously a low point for the club and the league,” recalled Hines, who took over as coach during the 2022 season.
And yet, from that chaos came cohesion. Hines, a former Orlando City player who began with the Pride as a volunteer coach, brought clarity, purpose and joy. The players responded to his leadership with respect and tenacity. They worked hard because they wanted to — for him, for each other and for a city that desperately needed something to believe in.
“There’s no secret recipe,” Hines said. “We just wanted to create a culture where the players wanted to come to training, work hard and have smiles on their faces.”
Two years later, what happened was nothing short of historic and euphoric: a record-breaking 2024 season in which the Pride set NWSL marks for points (60), wins (18), longest win streak (8) and longest unbeaten streak (23). The team didn’t just win games; they dominated the league.
Of course, turning a club around doesn’t just take a great coach. It takes a visionary front office, and in general manager Haley Carter the Pride found a warrior with a cause. A former NWSL player, practicing attorney and Marine Corps officer, Carter is known not just for her soccer IQ but for her unyielding commitment to player welfare and global women’s rights.
She is a former assistant coach for Afghanistan’s women’s national team and helped FIFA’s investigation into allegations that Keramuddin Keram, the president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, and his henchmen were sexually assaulting players. FIFA ended up banning Keram for life.
She also was instrumental in helping 75 Afghan women’s soccer players, officials and relatives make a harrowing emergency escape when the Taliban seized control of the country in 2021 after the United States pulled out.
“In professional sports, we’re in the people business and our capital assets are human beings,” Carter told the Sentinel after she took the job. “We need to be cognizant and ensure that we’re treating our athletes with respect and dignity. You look at any high-performing corporate environment and you’re never going to get away with yelling at and emotionally abusing your high-performing employees. It should be the same with athletes.”
Carter’s arrival essentially coincided with the Wilf Family, the billionaire owners of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, purchasing the team. Together, they have been at the forefront of the national movement to invest in women’s professional sports.
Case in point: Pride striker Barbra Banda.
Banda, a Zambian superstar, wasn’t easy to acquire. The Pride paid a $740,000 transfer fee, the second-highest in women’s soccer history, to pry her from Chinese club Shanghai Shengli.
Team chairman Mark Wilf asked Carter during the complex negotiations to acquire Banda: “Do you really think she’s worth it?”
Carter’s answer was as unwavering as Banda’s left-footed rocket that gave the Pride the 1-0 victory over the Washington Spirit in the NWSL championship game: “I know she is.”
Grant Hill, a former Magic superstar, recognized the potential of this team early. What began as a father’s wish to expose his young daughter to strong female role models has blossomed into a full-fledged investment. Today, Hill and his wife Tamia are part of the Pride’s ownership group.
“I think we’ve passed that inflection point where people are starting to look at women’s sports, in particular the NWSL and obviously the WNBA, as businesses that are profitable or will be profitable,” Hill said.
Carter puts it bluntly: “Women’s sports is no longer a charitable cause or a philanthropic effort; it’s a business model.”
Yes, the Pride are a burgeoning business, but for Marta, the team is a personal passion. The Brazilian icon is commonly recognized as the greatest women’s soccer player of all time and could have easily walked out on Orlando like so many other star athletes have over the years. Instead, she stayed. She endured the losing seasons, the cultural instability and the coaching chaos. She stayed because she believed in something bigger.
“I’ve been waiting eight [bleeping] years for this moment,” Marta said, tears in her eyes, holding the trophy on the night the Pride beat Washington in the championship game. “This moment gives me so many answers. I’ve been here such a long time, had so many ups and downs and seen so many players come and go. I would ask myself sometimes, ‘What am I looking for? Why am I staying in Orlando?’ And tonight gave me the answers. I know now I didn’t want to leave this place without doing something really big.”
For Marta, 39, it wasn’t just a championship; it was a reward for loyalty, perseverance and heart.
For the Pride, it was a revolution — not just for the team, but for a league, for a sport and for all of Central Florida.