Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

It’s been a busy couple weeks of reporting, with plenty from the worlds of soccer, basketball and politics crossing my path.

There’s enough that, instead of singling out one most curious thing of the week, we’re going to jump right into what I saw while reporting. 

We’ve got a dramatic, seven-goal thriller and some last-minute heroics in the NWSL, preparations for a WNBA season set to thrill fans in just a couple of weeks, and work on two different TV news shows.

Oh, and there was the Kentucky Derby and some NBA and NHL playoffs craziness, too. Let’s go!

But first, here’s Peach:

My Reporting

NWSL

Hoo wee, we had ourselves a barnburner Friday night in DC. It took a last-minute goal from rookie Riley Tiernan for visiting Angel City FC to put away Washington Spirit 4-3 in a 7-goal thriller where the Spirit erased two different leads that the LA-based club put up.

Tiernan put away two goals in total as she added to an impressive rookie campaign but two other goal scorers ended up defining the affair.

First came Tiernan’s Angel City teammate Gisele Thompson. The defender is in her second season in the league but is just 19 years old. And she’s usually further back on the pitch when her sister and teammate, 20-year-old Angel City forward Alyssa Thompson, is scoring goals or otherwise dashing up defenses.

And while Alyssa has been the Thompson taking the biggest steps forward this year, it was her younger sister Gisele who nabbed a first-half goal to give Angel City a 2-0 lead.

This was Gisele’s first career goal and it was her sister Alyssa who provided the assist. So when the moment came for a celebration—any plans went out the window as the two shared an ecstatic hug.

Postgame, both sisters acknowledged that it unfolded a little differently from the scenarios that would play out in their backyard growing up.

“I would feel like I would be the one to score, but, it was so nice that Gisele got her first goal and I got to assist it to her,” Alyssa Thompson said.

“I was so in the moment and so happy. I was just screaming towards Alyssa,” Gisele Thompson said.

On the other end of the pitch was one player who really, really needed a goal — Washington’s center back Esme Morgan. Center backs play, as the name suggests, in the back, meaning goal opportunities are rare for them. 

In last weekend’s matchup vs. NJ / NY Gotham FC, Morgan had a wide-open net and a chance to help the Spirit cut a 3-0 deficit. But with Morgan a bit off balance, she sent the shot sailing over the net and was visibly frustrated. The broadcast showed her on her knees slamming both of her hands against the grass.

Fast forward to Friday night and, as fate would have it, Morgan was a little closer to the net than usual in the 30^th minute. Fellow defender Gabby Carle hit a high, long ball toward the 18-yard box. It found Spirit striker and frequent goal scorer Ashley Hatch’s head but sailed onward to the right side where it found Morgan.

Despite being a little less open than in the previous game, Morgan hit it on her first touch and was able to sneak the ball in front of Angel City goalkeeper Angelina Anderson to meet the back-left corner of the net.

“I kind of got the perfect opportunity to redeem myself this week, with being 2-0 down again, just to be able to set us back on the foot to a comeback,” Morgan said postgame.

Although Morgan has a history of planning celebrations, she had none ready for an unlikely redemption and ran the whole length of the pitch back to her position in excitement. She did at least stop to jump into the arms of goalkeeper and former Manchester City teammate Sandy MacIver.

Morgan had not scored, whether for Manchester City, the England national team, or the Spirit, since May 2, 2021—four years to the day from scoring Friday.

A pair of goals, one by the Spirit’s Gift Monday in the first half and another by Angel City’s Katie Zelem in the second half, put the score at 3-2 as the clock neared 90 minutes.

With the Spirit in desperate need of a goal to tie it, they brought the ball into Angel City’s box. In a scrum with three opposing players around her, Esme Morgan again found herself in a play unfolding close to goal. The ball nicked her foot as she fell down between a pair of defenders but then crawled into the net to give the Spirit a pivotal goal to bring things level.

With a sister goal, a center back scoring two goals (a brace for those of you learning soccer lingo), and multiple leads erased, this game epitomized what’s known as “NWSL After Dark.” Those who have watched the league long enough know that, as games go deeper into the night, strange and unexpected things can happen.

Because Morgan’s goal was reviewed, there was no specific window for the sideline referee to indicate how many extra minutes would be played. The review also extended what we later learned was officially a 5-minute stoppage time.

In the eighth minute of stoppage time, Angel City had what seemed to be a final corner kick after nearly taking the lead on a near-miss. 

With one final chance to break the tie, a corner kick bounced off the head of Angel City’s veteran striker Christen Press and found her fellow forward Riley Tiernan, just a couple yards from goal.

Tiernan had an open net in front of her and booted it in to nab her own brace and bookend her early goal.

Shortly afterward, the whistle blew, letting Angel City head back home for their next matchup on Friday vs. Utah with three points in the standings.

The Spirit, meanwhile, suffered their second loss in a row, both at home.

“To be honest, I think it’s been a crazy game, too broken, and we wanted to have more control,” said assistant coach Adrián González, who was helming the team during head coach Jonatan Giráldez’s suspension.

Washington heads on to Chicago to face the last-place Chicago Stars on the road on Saturday.

WNBA

The WNBA is coming back! We are less than two weeks out from opening night and last week, local squad the Washington Mystics hosted their media day.

Every player, as well as head coach Sidney Johnson and general manager Jamila Wideman, spoke to the press as they began to prepare for a season with a very different, very young Mystics team.

The Mystics have a new coach and general manager, lost multiple players to free agency and retirement, and are building around three first-round picks they made in last month’s WNBA Draft—shooting guard Sonia Citron, post player Kiki Iriafen and point guard Georgia Amoore. (Since media day, the Mystics already will be down one rookie this year, as Amoore tore her ACL in practice later in the week and will miss the entire 2025 season.)

Only two players—center Stefanie Dolson and guard Brittany Sykes—have more than three years’ experience.

“This is something that has been on my list for my career to be a leader of a team, be a go-to player, be somebody that the rookies can look up to,” Sykes said.

“I kind of got, like, choked up, because one of the rookies said that, even when we’re competing, even when things are kind of hectic in practice, they still feel like they can come and talk to me, they can come to Stef. And transparently, that was something that I struggled with, the last two years here, when things are hitting the fan,” she added.

Her fellow veteran Stefanie Dolson felt that it was key to be a role model for the younger players.

“Every day I have to come in and I have to give my best and even if I’m tired or feeling down, when I see them all and see how eager they are and excited they are to play, they keep me young. So it kind of makes me more excited to be there and continues to push me as much as I can push them,” Dolson said.

Many players who will serve as the core of the Mystics’ rotation are players who were late-round picks or bounced around the league before finding a home.

It can often be an uphill battle for WNBA players drafted after the first round to settle into the league. On Friday, the expansion Golden State Valkyries cut Shyanne Sellers, their second-round pick and a Maryland alum initially expected to find a place on the team’s roster.

In the last four seasons, at least two first-round picks (Abby Meyers with the 2023 Dallas Wings and Mya Hollingshed with the 2022 Las Vegas Aces) were also cut before the start of the season.

Which raises the question: who sticks in the WNBA?

The Mystics have players who come from a wide set of backgrounds—later-round picks, undrafted free agents, even former high-level picks who have dealt with adversity. 

Mystics guard Sug Sutton knows it well, since she has played in parts of three seasons, including full seasons in 2023 and 2024, despite being the 36^th and last pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft.

“Coming into the W, I kind of took a role to bring energy to a team,” Sutton told me. “Every time I come on the court or every time I come into training camp, I try to bring energy, I try to play defense, and I think that’s my strong suit right now, being on the team, and then everything else will fall in too.”

Her teammate Emily Engstler had a different path. The former 4^th overall pick in 2022, Engstler was cut after her first season with the Indiana Fever, didn’t make the final cuts with the Mystics in 2023, and played briefly for the Minnesota Lynx as an injury replacement.

Engstler carved out a role with the Mystics last season after making the team out of training camp.

She told me that her journey has been a big factor in what’s helped her stick in the league.

“The majority of the person I’ve grown into in this league is because of the short fallings, like getting cut and just getting back up,” Engstler said.

She also pointed out that knowing who you are and enjoying what you can do can help.

“I really like being a role player. I have no problem doing it. And I think more people should be ok with being a role player. It’s super fun.”

For players on the margins, though, there’s a sense of being watched. Any moment, big or small, can be the difference between making a roster and being cut.

For second-round pick and Mystics rookie point guard Lucy Olsen, it’s a little too much to keep at the front of mind while trying to make the roster.

“I think overall if I thought about all of that all the time I would really stress myself out,” Olsen said, “so I’m just trying to enjoy every moment and just be myself. And I think being myself has gotten me to this point, so not trying to be anyone else or trying to act a certain way. If they want me for who I am, that’s great, and if not, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

MSNBC

The Briefing with Jen Psaki is now on the air! Make sure to watch it every Tuesday through Friday night at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.

Because when you do, you’ll not only get to see some of what I help make, but you’ll see some interesting interviews and big names. 

Like former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who was our first guest for our first episode Tuesday night.

Buttigieg talked a lot about the future of the Democratic Party and where they can go after the losses they suffered in the 2024 election.

“We have got to make sure that our opposition and everything that we’re against, and obviously there’s a lot to be passionately against right now, but it has to travel with a clearer picture of what we are for,” Buttigieg said. 

But he didn’t seem to suggest moving rightward or becoming more moderate was the solution, saying, “this is not a question of accommodating things that we don’t agree with or watering down or changing our values. It is a question of making very clear to everybody how your everyday life is different if we’re in charge compared to if they’re in charge.”

And I work for two shows now, since I also help produce the show airing Monday nights at 9pm on MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show.

If you’re anything like me, you know this show and its namesake host. Maddow has been on the air since 2008 and is someone who I grew up watching. And I have to admit, helping produce the show on Monday was surreal.

Making Maddow’s show is an extremely complex process unique to her, involving a lot of research, writing and editing being done in a very short amount of time.

I and the other new members of the team mostly served as role players to help the established folks already familiar with Maddow’s process but some of my monitoring and research into what members of Congress said at an event about Social Security on Monday evening made it on the air.

I also made sure my first show with the team included a visit to New York and to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where I got to see the control room, see the studio and meet everybody involved.

I’m looking forward to being a part of the team each week but this time around was mostly about geeking out that I get to do this for a living.

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Kentucky Derby: Horse racing’s Triple Crown kicked off with the 151^st Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Coming into the Run for the Roses, the odds caught my eye as the morning favorite, at 3-1 odds, was a horse named Journalism.

Yes, get all your jokes off here. No, neither a billionaire nor private equity were riding it. No, it was not laid off along the backstretch.

Look, if you ask me for my gut feeling, the Kentucky Derby probably shouldn’t exist these days. They sing a minstrel song (albeit one praised by Frederick Douglass) before the race. Horse racing itself is a brutal sport where the race to gain an edge on and off the track can verge on animal cruelty.

But… even I can be a sentimental sap for a race I’ve watched nearly every year since childhood and that was one of the few sports or sports-adjacent events I could get my dearly departed grandma to watch. I can still hear her sing along to My Old Kentucky Home without really knowing the actual lyrics.

In a rainy, messy, muddy race, the pack remained tight through the first ¾ mile. Heading into the homestretch, pre-race favorite Journalism and Sovereignty both dashed to the front, going nose-to-nose most of the way to the line. Sovereignty edged ahead in the last 1/16 of a mile, winning by 1 ½ lengths.

Sovereignty collected a $3.1 million prize for his owners, the UAE-based Godolphin, with his Kentucky Derby win.

But after assessing his condition, his team have brought quite the letdown, as Sovereignty will skip the Preakness Stakes next Saturday and voluntarily give up on the prospect of a Triple Crown winner. They did add, that Sovereignty is aiming to compete at the Belmont Stakes next month.

Rantanen’s Revenge: If you are a pro sports team and you decide you won’t sign a player to a new contract, you better hope you don’t face them in the playoffs. And you better hope that player doesn’t score a hat-trick against you in the final period of a Game 7.

The Colorado Avalanche had no such luck, facing forward Mikko Rantanen and the Dallas Stars just a few months after sending Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes after concluding that they would not like to pay Rantanen in his impending free agency.

The 28-year-old Finn had been with the Avalanche for a decade, playing 8 ½ seasons for Colorado before they sent him to Carolina.

The Hurricanes, however, turned around less than two months later and sent Rantanen back into the Western Conference to the Dallas Stars, who signed him to an eight-year, $96 million contract.

Rantanen found himself matched up against his former team in the first round of the playoffs after the Stars and Avalanche finished second and third, respectively, in the Central Division. 

Colorado forced a deciding Game 7 with a high-scoring 7-4 win in Game 6. But with Dallas holding home ice, Rantanen stepped up, sending Stars fans home happy and the team onto the next round with a hat trick, scoring 3 goals, all in the third period, and assisting on Wyatt Johnston’s goal to contribute to all four Stars goals in a 4-2 win.

And as if Rantanen wasn’t finished, he spearheaded the Stars win Wednesday night in game 1 of their second-round matchup vs. the Winnipeg Jets, scoring a natural hat trick to swing the game from 1-0 to 3-1 before the Stars held on for a 3-2 win.

We’ll see how Colorado holds up in the years to come after not paying Rantanen, but Rantanen certainly made them pay this year.

Something Good I Ate

I went to visit my parents this weekend, and they decided to take me to a new pizza place that opened up not far from them, The Sauce Pizza in Oceanport, New Jersey. 

Along Oceanport’s somewhat sparse East Main Street, The Sauce has a handful of outside tables, a handful of inside tables, and a space mostly dedicated to pizza ovens, displays and ingredients.

Maybe you can sneak into a little wooden booth, but most of their space and time will be focused on making your pizza.

And they don’t just churn out the classics like plain, pepperoni and veggie. At my mom’s urging, I got a slice of her favorite, the Semolina Margarita, with mozzarella, plum tomato, basil, and extra virgin olive oil on semolina dough. Plus I got a slice of their Gemini, a pizza with a sweet tomato sauce. 

I like to think that, in the DC area, we’ve finally gotten some good pizza. But none of it compares to even the new local pizza joint back home in Jersey.

These two slices were among the best I’ve had in years, possibly ever. The semolina slice, especially, absolutely nailed everything you could ask for in a pizza. It was soft and chewy up top but had a crunchy bottom. It wasn’t burnt but it wasn’t mushy either. It had flavor and life, with the semolina crust adding a little bit of earthiness and depth to the crust.

And the sweet touch of the Gemini was unique and made a beautiful Jersey slice even better than it would be otherwise.

Seriously, DC, step your game up and learn how to do it. Go straight to the source, by going straight to The Sauce!