Mex­i­co–Six-time win­ners, USA and Cos­ta Ri­ca opened their Con­ca­caf Women's World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign with con­trast­ing wins on Thurs­day at the Es­ta­dio Olimpi­co An­dres, Quin­tana Roo. Ab­by Wambach scored a hat-trick, twice in the first-half, and helped out on an­oth­er to pace the three-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on USA to a 5-0 vic­to­ry over Haiti.

Rachel Buehler scored her first ca­reer in­ter­na­tion­al goal less than nine min­utes af­ter the open­ing kick­off and Amy Ro­driguez al­so scored, over­whelm­ing a Haiti team that strug­gled to hold pos­ses­sion in the Amer­i­can half and didn't man­age a shot on goal un­til the 37th minute.

With the win, the USA which had 46 cor­ners to Hiati's one, im­proved to 24-1-0 in the Con­ca­caf women's cham­pi­onship and won its 17th straight in World Cup qual­i­fiers.

For the Haiti, which is still deal­ing with the af­ter ef­fects of Jan­u­ary's earth­quake - in­clud­ing a re­cent cholera out­break that has killed more than 300, it was the sixth loss in sev­en games in the Con­ca­caf women's cham­pi­onship fi­nals since fin­ish­ing fourth at the in­au­gur­al tour­na­ment in 1991.

It was the 112th ca­reer goal for Wambach, who trails on­ly Mia Hamm (158) and Kris­tine Lil­ly (130) for the most goals by an Amer­i­can woman.

For Lil­ly, the as­sist came in her ever ex­tend­ing record of 350 ap­pear­ances for the Unit­ed States. Haiti didn't man­age any pos­ses­sion in the of­fen­sive third un­til it earned a cor­ner kick in the 22nd, and didn't get a shot at goal un­til Ta­tiana Math­e­li­er launched a 30-me­tre at­tempt high and wide in the 34th.

Cos­ta Ri­ca beats Guatemala 1-0

In the day's open­ing match, Adri­ana Vene­gas scored in the 51st minute to lead Cos­ta Ri­ca to a 1-0 vic­to­ry over Cen­tral Amer­i­can ri­val Guatemala. It was a frus­trat­ing start for Las Ticas, a team ex­pect­ing to con­tend for one of two guar­an­teed berths at next year's World Cup and play­ing against a side mak­ing its first ap­pear­ance in the con­fed­er­a­tion's women's cham­pi­onship since 2000. Both sides used rel­a­tive­ly young line­ups, in­clud­ing 16-year-old Maria Mon­ter­roso in the Guatemalan mid­field and Cos­ta Ri­can for­ward Raquel Ro­driguez Ce­de­no, who turned 17 on Thurs­day. Cos­ta Ri­ca had the ma­jor­i­ty of play and fi­nal­ly con­vert­ed when cap­tain Shirley Cruz worked her way to the top of the Guatemalan penal­ty area and paused briefly be­fore send­ing a short low ball to Vene­gas. The 21-year-old for­ward set­tled and turned to roll a ball from eight me­ters un­der Guatemalan keep­er Ana Lu­cia Spross.

Re­main­ing fix­tures:

To­day:

Group B:

Cos­ta Ri­ca vs Haiti, 7 pm

USA vs Guatemala, 9.30 pm

To­mor­row (Sun):

Guyana vs Cana­da, 7 pm

T&T vs Mex­i­co, 9.30 pm