By Scott French, Senior Editor BEST GOAL/BEST GAME: Katia has been one of the WUSA's most enigmatic performers since the league opened for business. She's an immense talent, capable of things few others can accomplish, but her gifts often have been overshadowed by tactical naivete and inconsistent play. When the Brazilian forward is at the top of her game, there may be nobetter women's player on the planet. She offered that kind of performance in San Jose's 3-1 romp over San Diego on Sunday, destroying the Spirit an exceptional performance marked by superb individual goals four minutes apart. On the first, in the 31st minute, San Diego's Fan Yunjie was trying to herd a rolling ball past the end line. Katia stepped around the Chinese defender, kept the ball alive on the line, raced to the net and clipped the ball between goalkeeper Jaime Pagliarulo and the right post. Katia's 35th-minute strike is a strong contender for Goal of the Year. Pretinha chipped a ball from the right flank, over defender Margaret Tietjen, to Katia on the right side of the box, about 12 yards deep. She collected it on the volley with her right foot, pushing it ahead, took a couple steps, then volleyed a screaming shot past a diving Pagliarulo and into the far-side netting. Fan, who was marking her on the play, was pulled immediately afterward by interim coach Kevin Crow. The Spirit general manager was making his coaching debut after dismissing Carlos Juarez last week. Katia's six goals are tops in the WUSA, one more than Carolina's Danielle Fotopoulos, Atlanta's Charmaine Hooper and Boston's Dagny Mellgren. TEAM TO BEAT: The Atlanta Beat, which sat in the cellar the first month of the season, has been demonstrating why nearly everyone picked it to win the second WUSA title. Charmaine Hooper and Cindy Parlow scored first-half goals as Atlanta climbed into second place, just one point behind Philadelphia, with a 2-0 win at New York. The victory was the Beat's fourth in a row (three of them on the road) and goalkeeper Briana Scurry's third successive shutout. It extended an unbeaten streak to five games. The Beat has erupted as its health has solidified. Its early-season troubles accompanied injuries that slowed or sidelined Hooper, Parlow, Sun Wen and Nancy Augustyniak. Hooper's and Parlow's early strikes have prodded the Beat's win streak. After going without a first-half tally through its first five games (posting a 1-3-1 mark in the process), Atlanta's last four matches have started with goals in the ninth (Parlow, 2-1 at San Jose), 10th (Parlow, 1-0 vs. Boston), 21st (Hooper, 2-0 at San Diego) and 15th (Hooper, 2-0 at New York). NO KELLY, NO CRY: The Philadelphia Charge may not have played as aesthetically pleasing soccer in Saturday's 1-1 tie with Washington as they normally do when Kelly Smith is on the field, but Coach Mark Krikorian was pleased with the chances his squad created in its first game without Smith, who sustained a season-ending anterior cruciate ligament tear a week earlier. Frenchwoman Marinette Pichon was the foundation of most of the Charge's forays. Whether she succeeded or not depends on viewpoint. Pichon took eight shots in the match, six of them on target, one off the crossbar and one off a post. One of the shots found the net — an 87th-minute equalizer — but only after Jen Tietjen's free kick somehow cleared Washington's Casey Zimny and Steffi Jones in the box. With more precise finishing, Pichon might have had a hat trick — or two. Too often she fired directly at Freedom goalkeeper Siri Mullinix when presented an open shot. ''We don't measure it by the goals, we measure it by the chances …,'' Krikorian said. ''Marinette is special. She's so quick and creative. We were concerned: Are we still going to be able to generate the chances we normally do? I think we did.''