The Houston Dash are 2020 Challenge Cup champions, a sentence few expected one month ago when the NWSL became the first professional team sport to return in the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But there was one group of people who fully believed Houston was fully capable of winning the Utah tournament: the Dash themselves. It’s one thing for sports teams to say they have that belief, but it’s a lot harder to go out and actually prove it. Especially when you’re an underdog as big as the Dash, who sat at initial +2000 betting odds on June 1 (back when it was a nine-team tourney before the Orlando Pride had to withdraw) and were given just a 7% chance of winning the championship by statistical site FiveThirtyEight when the tournament kicked off.