Kreis left his mark with improbable kicks

No one was going to shoot from there. At least no one in his right mind.

The ball was a good 35 yards out, though as the years pass 35 becomes 40 and pretty soon 40 becomes 50. In any event, it was beyond shooting range.

The smart play would have been a soft chip into the box, a speculative pass in search of a leaping teammate.

"It was ludicrous to think anyone was going to shoot from there," said Duke goalkeeper Garth Lagerwey, whose position gave him the best perspective on the play.

It was a free kick, with the Blue Devils and perennial powerhouse Indiana scoreless in the 1993 MetLife-adidas Soccer Classic. It was a free kick, and free kicks belonged to Jason Kreis.

"We needed a goal badly," the midfielder recalled. "So I just decided to have a go, put my head down and smacked it as hard as I could."

The ball met the outside of Kreis' right foot and took off like a rocket, soaring over a two-man wall the Hoosiers had erected as a token defense against the slim possibility of a shot from that distance.

It kept climbing, passing over a second line of players waiting in the penalty area, screaming skyward without a chance at the goal. Then, suddenly, just as quickly as it had risen, the ball dipped.

"Practice, practice, practice" was the recipe for Kreis, whom Rennie described as "maybe the hardest-working soccer player I've ever had, all year round, every day."

Lagerwey and Kreis, who forged a special relationship from the time they arrived at Duke in 1991, had a daily ritual. Taking a bag of balls out to the practice fields, the two would go one-on-one for hours in a game they created.

"Jason would get 10 balls to shoot each round," Lagerwey said. "For every shot I caught or ball that went high or wide, he lost that ball. If he scored or I got a rebound, he got to keep that ball and use it again.

"If he got four goals in a round, he won. Three goals was a draw. Two goals and I won."

Who won more often is a matter of debate, even today.

"Jason would probably say he had the slight edge, but I would refute that," Lagerwey said. "We're so competitive that if you lost a few games in a row, the trash-talking would elevate to the point where you had no choice but to win the next round."

The hundreds of afternoons spent on free kicks, those countless hours spent, as Kreis put it, "trying to make Garth Lagerwey look like a total fool," paid huge dividends for both players.

Kreis, who finished his Duke career with 39 goals and 38 assists, and Lagerwey, who compiled 300 saves and a 1.22 career goals-against average, led Duke to a 55-26-4 record in four years, including a trip to the 1992 Final Four.

"[Kreis] had the ability to carry a team all on his own," Rennie said. "I don't know when we've ever had a player who had to do that, and he did.

"The last two years he was here, he was basically everything on the team."

The goal against Indiana was but one in a line of memorable Kreis free kicks. Another of Rennie's favorites came against Southern Methodist in 1994, when Kreis booted the game-winning free kick on national television.

"He got on SportsCenter for that one," Rennie said. "He ran over to the sideline, pulled his shirt over his head and did a somersault."

SMU was also the victim of Kreis' personal favorite moment, when he scored in a shootout to help Duke win after 150 scoreless minutes and advance to its third Final Four. The Blue Devils eventually lost to Virginia in the semifinals, ending a magical run.

"If somebody asked me what my best accomplishment was at Duke, it was making the Final Four that year," Kreis said. "We really overachieved as a team, bonded together and accomplished more than the sum of that group's parts."

It was a defining moment for Kreis, then just a sophomore, who would go on to accomplish even greater things as a professional.

After graduation, both he and Lagerwey signed pro contracts and eventually wound up together again with the Dallas Burn of the fledgling Major League Soccer.

"I was thinking about going to Europe all the way through my Duke career," Kreis said. "It's sort of in the back of every player's mind."

But the birth of the MLS in 1996 gave Kreis a chance to excel on the homefront, and he has made the most of it. He is a frontrunner for the 1999 league MVP award, having recently become the first player in league history to score 15 goals and post 15 assists in the same season.

And he is back in contention for a spot on the U.S. National Team. Last month, Kreis donned the red, white and blue for an exhibition match and scored a goal in a 2-2 tie at Kingston, Jamaica.

"This year has pretty much been all the reasons why I started to play soccer," Kreis said. "Everything's going the right way. It was a long time coming and it required me to be a little more patient than I'm used to.

"But to score a goal just made it all worth it."

Kreis has come a long way since 1990 when, as a high school senior, he came to Duke soccer camp to get noticed. Spotting Kreis for the first time that summer, Rennie knew he was onto something special.

Kreis' poise, his vision, his overall ability were all beyond the camp's normal level of competition.

"I went up to him and I said, 'Jason, where are you from? Did you really learn to play like that in Louisiana?'

"He said 'No, sir,' and I expected him to say he was from the East Coast, but he said, 'I grew up in Nebraska,' which isn't exactly a soccer hotbed, either."

Louisiana, Nebraska, Idaho-none of it made a difference to Rennie, who offered Kreis a full scholarship immediately. By the time Kreis became a household name in recruiting circles that fall, he had already committed to Duke.

Stealing Kreis from the unknown territory of Louisiana was Rennie's coup, but in light of the player's uncanny scoring, maybe it should be dubbed a longshot.