Many teams point to a big victory as the turning point of a season. But the women's soccer team experienced its change during the halftime of a game it would eventually lose.
The Blue Devils knew they were talented. Head coach Bill Hempen said that from the first days of practice, the players showed signs they were going to be a top team. They knew they could make a run at the national championship. But early in the year, Duke tried to rely on its talent rather than hard work. That attitude didn't really show early in the season, as Duke started with a 6-2 record, the two losses to top-10 programs. The mentality shone through in an upset 2-1 loss to N.C. State on Sept. 28. Senior goalkeeper Melissa Carr noted that the high expectations weren't to blame for the Blue Devils' play.
"I don't think we expected too much of ourselves," Carr said. "Maybe we thought it would come to us easier. We finally realized it takes hard work to win. Maybe we didn't realize that before."
Then came a game against Maryland. During the first half, nothing changed. But the second half, the Blue Devils began to play to their potential. Duke lost 2-1 to the Terrapins, but at the same time that game may have saved its season.
"After the Maryland game, we were in shock," senior midfielder Katherine Remy said. "We were going to either improve or lay down and die. We wanted to go to the NCAAs... We wanted to achieve something."
With the loss to the Terps, Duke stood at 6-4 and was on the bubble of gaining an NCAA tournament bid. But that's when things started to turn around for the Blue Devils. Hempen considered the second half of the Maryland game the first time that his team had played its hardest. But as he noted, that was only for 45 minutes. In order to win, Duke needed to play a hard 90 minutes.
The breakthrough game came against then-No.2 Notre Dame. The Blue Devils lost to the Fighting Irish 5-0 last year, but this year things would be different. In what Hempen called the team's most emotional game up to that point in the season, Duke earned a 2-2 tie. The Blue Devils had a chance to the very end to pull off a victory. Still, as Hempen said, 89 minutes and 30 seconds wasn't enough to win--the team had to play its heart out for the full 90 minutes.
"We were playing the same caliber of opponents the second half as in the first half," Hempen said. "We learned nobody was going to sit around and watch Duke play. They were going to try to beat Duke."
The Blue Devils were impressive during the second half of the season, winning nine games, including eight shutouts. Hempen credited the presence of senior defender Missy Durham in the backfield as building a more cohesive defense.
The Blue Devils proved they were for real when it crushed then nationally-ranked Virginia 6-0 in their last regular season conference match-up. Duke would face the Cavaliers again in the first round of the ACC tournament, this time pulling out a 1-0 squeaker over the Wahoos. In the tourney semifinals, Duke once again faced North Carolina. Even a full 90 minutes from the Blue Devils wasn't enough to beat the Tar Heels.
"When we played UNC in the ACC tourney and lost, our team was gutted," Hempen said. "I don't know if we had ever played them harder, and we still lost."
With an strong second half of the season, the Blue Devils reached their first goal of the NCAA tournament. And the tournament bracket couldn't have been drawn any better by Hempen himself. First, Duke received a bye for the first round. The team's first game would be a home contest. And for the first time in many years, arch-rival North Carolina was in the other bracket, meaning Duke wouldn't have to worry about the Tar Heels until the finals.
Of course, before the finals, there was the catch of winning round two. The Blue Devils lost to N.C. State by the same score of the two teams' first meeting this year, 2-1, only this time it was in sudden death overtime. One second, Duke was fighting for a win. The next second, its season was over.
"One of the hardest things was we lost in sudden death," Carr said. "The ball goes in the net, and it's over. There's no time to think about it. No time to come back. That was tough. I had never played in sudden death. I had never been though those emotions. Suddenly it was over. Our season was over."
Hempen said before the game he thought his team was emotionally prepared. But the loss to UNC in the ACC tourney had taken a lot out of them. It seemed as it wasn't meant to be for Duke.
"It was one of those situations that was out of your hands," Hempen said.
For this year's senior class, the early NCAA exit meant no chance at a national championship. The class of 1996 had been to the national finals its first year. That group of athletes had accomplished the impossible--beating the Tar Heels on their home turf for the first time ever. Hempen said one of the hardest parts about the sudden-death loss was in an instant, he had lost his team. He said one of the best things about playing in the championship game in 1992 was knowing the team was playing in the last college game of the season.
"That's the thing I wanted for this team," he said.
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