Matt Wells’s dominant soccer team finally hopped on the plane.
Heading into Saturday night, the Colorado Rapids’ four 2026 games featured two multi-goal wins at home and two multi-goal losses on the road. The pattern broke at Sporting Park in Game 5 of the Wells era, where the Rapids throttled Sporting Kansas City 4-1 for their third win of the season.
Paxten Aaronson, Colorado’s all-time record inbound transfer, opened his 2026 account with a brace. That gave him more goals in one evening than his entire Colorado tenure prior, which began in August of last season.
Both goals looked pretty similar: arrive somewhat late, receive a layoff from a forward and slot it to the bottom corner. He had one in each half and one to each side netting.
Much has been made in recent weeks about the attacking midfielder’s lack of scoring, but a brace against a rival could just get him going. Better late than never.
“Nothing has shifted from day one of working with Paxten. Before I even came to the club, knowing my game model and my way of playing — Paxten’s qualities were a match made in heaven,” Wells said. “You forget he’s very young because of his experience (in MLS and in Europe), but he’s in a great spot. We just have to keep him there.”
Colorado had an end to the first half that went from nervy to delightful in a matter of just a couple of minutes. After Aaronson opened the scoring in the 12th minute, former Rapid Calvin Harris assisted Shapi Suleymanov for the equalizer in the 44th on a run in behind that caught Jackson Travis sleeping.
Two minutes later, 21-year-old midfielder Wayne Frederick scored his first professional goal for the lead back in first-half stoppage time. Dante Sealy put a dangerous corner into the box, then SKC keeper John Pulskamp unconvincingly parried it off the crossbar and down to a thankful Frederick, who cleaned up for an easy one.
Frederick was a name that wasn’t much more than an afterthought until Wells entered the fray, but the youngster has now played 239 minutes this season, started two matches and has a goal and an assist. Those are all career single-season highs — just five games into the campaign.
“Wayne’s been excellent from the start of preseason. … The functions that I need in the team and our game model and our way of playing, Wayne delivers those,” Wells said. “His goal was probably more pleasing for (set piece coach) Rob Burch than me. It was a play Rob called during the week and we tried to design it around Wayne to score. … Tactically, he’s improving all the time in terms of the function I want within our attacking football.”
Rafael Navarro scored goal No. 3 on Saturday night in the 71st minute, only a few minutes before Aaronson put the final touches on the match. And it was most pivotal.
SKC had all the momentum in the second half and threatened to score on numerous occasions. That situation was only made more tense given three of Colorado’s four defenders had a yellow card and two of them had hard fouls that could have resulted in a sending-off.
Then against the run of play, Aaronson found a pass to the byline to left back Miguel Navarro, who played all 90 minutes of his first Rapids start on Saturday. He picked out a perfect low cross to Rafael Navarro for a tap-in.
That’s the Brazilian striker’s third goal in five games, which puts him on good early track to challenge the club’s single-season scoring record (16) for the third straight year. The closest he got was 15 in 2024.
But with an offense that has now scored four goals in two of its five games under Wells, the sky is the limit for Rafael Navarro and beyond. That mark for a single game has been a rarity for years — only seven occurrences this decade.
Even up 4-1 in the final 15 minutes, the Rapids kept pushing past the limits of stamina to find a fifth goal, both in the press and in the buildup. That’s Matt Wells ball at its best.
“I think the No. 1 thing is just the duels. Coming into the game tonight, we looked at the stats of the duels — Kansas City was No. 1 and we were way too low, so we prided ourselves on that” Aaronson said. “We know we have a good build-up, we know we have top coaching and top players, so tonight was just about winning the duels and I think we did that.
“… I think it’s kind of a belief around the group. Coach has done a tremendous job … Giving everyone that hope and that belief that no matter what game, no matter which minute, you can come in and make an impact.”
The win flipped the result of the same fixture from last season, where the Rapids were decimated by the same score by an arguably even worse SKC team while in the midst of a playoff push. That sort of result defined the past couple of Rapids seasons: pulling off some impressive results, but not taking care of bad teams, especially on the road.
Small sample size, but early impressions would suggest the opposite will define this era: keep the foot glued to the gas, and do not play down to the competition.