The Powers that be

As soon as she punched the ball into her own net, Cassidy Powers knew what awaited her.

Her father, Gerard, and his five siblings had trekked to Winston-Salem from California and New York just to watch Duke play North Carolina in the ACC Spring Tournament last April, and they had managed to catch the senior goalkeeper's gaffe in between intermittent outbreaks of the wave.

Powers walked off the field and gravitated to her dad, her biggest fan and her sounding board during three years as the backup goalie. This year, though, she was finally slated to start between the pipes, and the annual ACC spring round robin offered her first genuine glimpse of the most competitive conference in the country. Still, Gerard hadn't felt the need to come for the weekend. He required convincing from Cassidy and her mother, Kathleen. Soon after, his three brothers and two sisters insisted on joining the party.

Powers wasn't as sharp in net as she would have preferred that weekend, but the pack of relatives laughing in the stands didn't seem to notice. The family, though, hadn't missed the insignificant mistake. So after earning the embarrassment of a goalkeeper's most humiliating fate-an own-goal-Powers shuffled over to the sidelines, where her dad greeted her exactly the way she thought he would.

"Great goal," he said.

"That's how he was," Powers said. "When I was younger, if I did something wrong and would come off the field, I would be completely battered and so upset with myself, and he would joke around with me and make fun of me for it."

Just more than one month later, Gerard, his wife, two daughters, five siblings and countless friends learned his pancreatic cancer had progressed further and he had only months to live.

He never made it to the end of August, and couldn't have picked up the phone when Cassidy would have called him after Duke's 9-0 season-opening win Aug. 24. He died July 28-just days before the Blue Devils started training camp, days before Powers started her senior season, months after she had abandoned all her summer plans and returned home to him, for the last time.

Only Gerard's objection to the latter made Cassidy's decision thorny.

"Initially, dad didn't want us to come home," said Cassidy, whose sister also opted to cancel her overseas ticket. "We were like, 'What are you talking about? We have to come home.'"

With one visit to the doctor, family had supplanted soccer and school at the forefront of Cassidy's attention, but she needed something to distract her. Rituals helped. The family played Cranium and Scene It and watched America's Funniest Home Videos every day. Everyone laughed and tried not to remember that day's episode could be the finale.

Sometimes, though, the world was too much with Cassidy. Board games and Tom Bergeron could not quell the feelings of anxiety that lingered in the Powers house, where Gerard was cooped up all day. Cassidy, embroiled in her past and present, turned to her future, and recalled what she might have been doing if life hadn't interrupted.

She returned to soccer. She joined her old club team and ran by herself on a local track, all at the urging of Gerard, the selfless father who didn't want his sickness to disrupt his daughter's other plans.

"He knew my situation, knowing I still had to fight for the starting position this year, and every day he'd be encouraging me to go and work out," Powers said. "It didn't matter what was going on with him. He was encouraging me to play well and do what I want to do.

"Personally, I think it helped me cope with everything and kind of keep my mind off it, because you can't really focus on one thing. Otherwise, I would have gone crazy. And I think my dad would've gone crazy, also."

It wouldn't be the last time she turned to soccer for solace.

Gerard Powers died 11 days before the start of Duke's training camp. Cassidy no longer had to make a decision that had been looming all summer. If he had lived longer, after all, she might have decided to stay in California rather than settle in at Duke for her senior season.

"It did cross my mind [to stay home], but it didn't stay there very long," Powers said. "My dad wouldn't let it happen. He would have physically put me on the plane to bring me back here if he were still there to do it."

Instead, she relied on her teammates and coaches to act as her gravitational force. Powers talked with fellow senior Kelly Hathorn and head coach Robbie Church about once a week during the summer. They chatted about her dad and, of course, soccer. But they could have talked about anything-the Blue Devils just wanted to let Powers know she had another team waiting for her.

"They were very important calls," Church said. "I just wanted to find the right amount of time to touch base with her. I wanted to make sure she knew we were all thinking about her here.... The family knew how much she put her stock in and how long she had waited for this opportunity."

She was forced to wait a few days longer, though, when Gerard's funeral services interfered with the start of practice, slated for Aug. 8. Gerard's friends lived in California and his family in New York, so he was the recipient of two memorials. The first, in the Powers' hometown of San Ramon, Calif., took place Aug. 7. The second, at St. Raymond's Parish in East Rockaway, N.Y. landed in the middle of training camp Aug. 13.

Hathorn had heard something in Powers' voice all summer, something that told the senior forward that Duke's goalkeeper was itching to get back into a normal routine-which, for Powers, included a heavy dose of soccer.

"She wanted to be at home and wanted to be with her family, but at the same time, she had to leave her summer league team here," Hathorn said. "You just could tell she was a little bit bored and wishing she was playing."

Which is why Hathorn and Church did their best to bring Duke to Powers one day earlier than she had imagined. The two flew to New York for the second service-Hathorn represented the players, who had spoken with Powers on speaker phone during the Blue Devils' first practice, and Church went for the staff, including goalkeeper coach Nathan Kipp and T.J. Grams, Duke's assistant director for academic support.

They traded barbs with Powers' uncles, the ones who cracked them up in the spring when they did the wave. They heard stories of Gerard that allowed them to learn more about the man who impacted their friend. More than anything, they left camp to be there for Powers-to show her that she still belonged to a team even if she was without her biggest fan.

"Before the service, I talked to [Church] and said if it had been me, I think she would have done the same thing," Hathorn said. "She would have wanted to be there. It was just one of those things where there wasn't really a doubt in my mind that's where I needed to be."

And after the summer with her family, after coping with the loss that she had anticipated but never learned to expect, after celebrating her father's life on both ends of the country, Powers, too, knew where she needed to be.

The exhilaration of a new season tends to dissipate in the face of two-a-days, those grueling preseason workouts that try to accomplish months' work in weeks. By the time Powers, Hathorn and Church arrived back in Wrightsville Beach, N.C. for training camp the day after the New York service, the Blue Devils were slogging. They were almost a week into official practice, and the thrill of beginning was already stale.

For Powers, though, the energy of a new season was a fresh respite. She walked into the team's rented house Friday morning and was visibly enthused to see the teammates who had e-mailed and text-messaged her all summer. And then the Blue Devils proceeded to the practice field, where Powers could no longer contain her emotion.

"Oh, I was like a kid in a candy store I was so excited," she said. "I swear I had a grin on my face the entire practice. While everyone's been doing double-days for a week, I was just like, 'Come on guys, this is great!' Just getting that first catch with [Kipp]-probably the greatest feeling I've ever had."

It didn't hurt that Powers was the expected starter for the first time in her career, no longer trapped behind four-year starter Allison Lipsher. Even though she earned valuable time as the team's only goalkeeper in its 10 spring games, Powers had to earn the job, Church said. She understood the position wasn't necessarily hers-and so, too, did her father.

"She never whined, she never complained, she never tried to say it was anyone else's fault," Church said of Powers' first three seasons. "She knew [Lipsher] was a heckuva goalkeeper. She just did the best she could every day, and she got better and better. She wasn't handed this job. She came out and won the job."

And she has kept it all season, playing with an aggressive fervor that reminds her teammates of her predecessor, Lipsher. Powers was previously prone to occasional self-criticism, but her confidence has risen to the point where she no longer finds herself affected by one miniscule mistake, Hathorn said.

Powers has already notched four shutouts for No. 11 Duke, and her goals-against average is 0.8. Lipsher's career mark was 0.87.

Maybe her success is rooted in a surge in confidence-or maybe it has more to do with using soccer as an escape, a way to finally free herself from grief's grip. On the soccer field, Powers must focus solely on preventing the 10 players in front of her from guiding the ball into the net behind her.

The other team scores, or she makes a save. The task is simple, but far from meaningless.

"Soccer has been, like, a lifesaver," Powers said. "Being able to come to practice-there would be days when I would think about it and can't get it out of my head until I come to practice. When you step on the soccer field, everything else in your life disappears, and soccer is all that matters. It's something that has gotten me through this and allowed me to not go crazy."

Not that she wants to forget about her summer. She keeps a photo of her father in her locker and writes his initials on her wrist in Sharpie before each game. Powers knows she can't talk to him after every game like she used to.

She finds comfort, instead, on the soccer pitch, in practices, where her thoughts can't wander, and in games, where she knows the wind blowing through Koskinen Stadium might just be a devout Duke fan doing the wave.