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Duke’s nationally ranked package
was a little too big-league for the Catawba women’s soccer team Saturday
night.
The Lady Indians were thoroughly
outplayed in their season-opener at Frock Field, where the visitors from Durham
collected a 6-0 victory.
“We won’t see anybody this good
all year,” said Kevin Dempsey, Catawba’s seventh-year coach. “No one,
knock on wood, is going to beat us 6-0. I think this loss is going to go a long
way. It’s sort of a measuring stick. It shows us what we need to do.”
Although Catawba was outshot 34-1,
there was at least one bright spot. Sophomore Kim Clayton was an acrobat in
goal, scrambling and diving and leaping for a school-record 18 saves.
“It was 90 minutes of adrenaline,”
she said after an exhausting performance. “I spent the whole match talking to
my teammates and trying to stay focused. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
Clayton’s admirable display was
impossible to ignore. Both Dempsey and Duke coach Bill Hempen affixed their
personal seals of approval.
“No doubt she was our best player
tonight,” said Dempsey. “She was all-American status, just phenomenal. Their
coach’s comment was, ‘I’m glad we scored early because your goalie played
a great game.’ I was like, ‘You’re darned right.’”
Duke, the nation’s 22nd-ranked
Division I team, needed less than two minutes to show the Lady Indians who was
boss. Its first shot, a 10-yard rocket by Greensboro native Sarah Pickens, found
its way into the lower left corner.
“Right away we knew they wanted to
play this game at a hundred miles-an-hour,” said Clayton, who fought off a
bout with mono and recorded 10 shutouts last autumn. “We had to find a way to
slow this match down.”
Dempsey’s strategy was to play a
half-court game, shortening the field by having his defenders pick up Duke’s
forwards near midfield. “If we had tried to play the full field, it could have
been like 10 or 12 to nothing,” he said.
Duke extended its lead in the 12th
minute, when Brigid Bowdell took a doorstep pass from Carly Fuller and beat
Clayton with another low shot. Then late in the first half Alison Sanders
gathered a ball in the Duke end, dribbled down the left side and scored on a
breakaway.
“That was pretty bad,” said
senior Catey Conner, Catawba’s all-time leading scorer with 44 career goals.
“We just let her walk all the way in. Nobody talked, nobody went after her.”
Duke received a pair of second-half
goals from freshman Gwendolyn Oxenham to mount a 5-0 lead. Teammate Liz Wagner
closed the scoring when she buried her own rebound with less than six minutes to
play.
Catawba, which opened the season
ranked 20th among Division II schools, didn’t place a shot on goal until
Conner ripped a 20-yard direct kick that Duke reserve keeper Thora Helgadottir
deflected away.
“This was definitely a learning
experience,” said Conner, the well-defensed striker who spent much of the game
eating grass. “You couldn’t hold on to the ball more than a couple of
touches because they were right there to take it from you or hit you or tackle
you. I learned that the first time I touched the ball.”
Despite the lopsided outcome,
Dempsey shared encouraging words with his team in a post-game pep talk.
“I feel really good about our
effort,” he said after Catawba lost its first home opener in 12 years. “This
would have been a good scrimmage because it’s our first 90-minute match, our
first 11-a-side match.It pointed out our weaknesses. Good teams like that make
you pay for your mistakes.”
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