There hasn't been a lot of "fun" recently, but we hit a couple of milestones last night.

Chris Pontius enjoyed his best half of soccer in probably two years last night, a great way to celebrate his 150th game for United. He's the ninth player to reach that plateau in the team's history. Four of the others are in United's Hall of Tradition. Party Boy may have played himself into an invitation back to the team next year, but in the near future, I want to write up a post taking a look at Pontius's legacy in DC. (Hint: It looks a lot like Santino Quaranta.)

The only player with more appearances for United on the current roster is Perry Kitchen. He made his return from card accumulation suspension and had a typically excellent, unflashy game. It was his 156th game. Assuming he plays against Chicago and Columbus, he'll finish the season with 158 games, one behind Quaranta. Kitchen has been angling for a new contract, and his play (combined with what Markus Halsti has shown) suggests the team might be wise to lock him up. If he plays 24 games next season, he'll catch Clyde Simms to be in the Top 5 games played for United all time. If he plays in every game on the 34 game schedule, he'll pass Marco Etcheverry for the #4 spot (and be only three games behind Bryan Namoff). And this is where I point out that at the end of the 2016 season, Kitchen will still only be 24.

We scored some goals last night! Fabian Espindola tallied his fourth goal of the campaign. That puts him one behind Jairo Arrieta for second place for the team scoring lead. He also has 15 goals in his United career (to go along with 15 assists). That ties him with Steve Rammel, Luis Silva, and Abdul Thompson Conteh. Rammel and Conteh both reached 15 goals faster than Fabi, but neither they nor Silva have 15 assists combined. On the current squad, only Chris Rolfe and Chris Pontius have scored more times for United.

Alvaro Saborio has looked fairly bad in his time with United, but he's actually scoring at a decent pace. He has three goals in ten games. That's more than Chris Pontius or Conor Doyle, who've spent a decent amount of time up top. Saborio is another player whose return next season is questionable. If he doesn't come back, he'll have scored three goals in the fewest amount of games for the club. The next closest is Stephen Armstrong, who thrice scored in 15 games for the 2001 squad.

We mentioned that Pontius played in his 150th game for the club, and Chris Rolfe is precisely 100 games behind him, playing in his 50th game. I'd speculated earlier that Conor Doyle might be the next player on the roster to reach the 100 games played mark, but with Rolfe under contract for the next two years, he might reach it first. Doyle is only four games ahead of Rolfe.

With Steve Birnbaum sitting due to yellow card accumulation, Fabian Espindola was able to catch him at 42 games played - the Rod Dyachenko mark! It also allowed Kofi Opare to play in his 16th game, matching (among others) Michael Farfan, Danny Cruz, and Joseph Ngwenya. Opare recently signed a contract extension, so we should expect to see this number climb. Given that the team was able to pick up a win, and Opare played fairly well, it's possible that he might supplant Steve Birnbaum in the starting lineup for the rest of the season. I would say that his contract extension looks like bad news for Bobby Boswell, though.

Alvaro Saborio reached double digits, playing his tenth game for the club. The only other forward with exactly ten games played for United is Quavas Kirk.

Last night, the team honored Kevin Payne. Payne left the club following the 2012 season, and there's been a lot of turnover since. Besides coaches Ben Olsen and Chad Ashton, the only players left who played under Payne are Nick DeLeon, Perry Kitchen, Chris Korb, Chris Pontius, Bill Hamid, and Bobby Boswell. Although Chris Rolfe probably knows KP pretty well (wink, wink).

And lastly, by defeating NYCFC, United has now beaten every other team in the league at least once.