A little over three months after competing against each other for the NCAA championship, Duke sophomore Mollie Pathman and Stanford freshman Chioma Ubogagu again took to the pitch with a title on the line. This time, however, the same name adorned the front of their jerseys as the two teamed up to win a women’s U-20 CONCACAF championship for the United States this March.
Although the collegiate season is long over, for the top women’s soccer players the offseason is brief. Beginning with a 30-player camp, which lasted from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19, Pathman has devoted much of her spring semester to training and playing with the American youth national team.
And Pathman is not the only Blue Devil who represented her country on the world stage. Fellow sophomore Natasha Anasi donned a U.S. jersey as well and started for the U-23 national team, which plays at the highest level of competition in the youth national system, helping it win the U-23 Four Nations Tournament.
“It was overall a really rewarding experience, and to reach that, it’s almost close to the pinnacle of what you could ever reach in your soccer career,” Anasi said.
Anasi also had the opportunity to play with several college rivals, including Stanford’s Lindsey Taylor and Camille Levin and North Carolina’s Amber Brooks.
“It’s different because you build these personalities of these people. But once you start to actually get to know them, it’s interesting to see like, ‘Oh, they’re actually really nice girls,’” Anasi said.
For both Anasi and Pathman, competition on the international stage represents a result of the efforts they put into their youth national team careers. Anasi first participated in youth national system camps in her senior year of high school.
Pathman’s participation in the U.S. youth national soccer system, however, goes even further back.
First starting with the U-14 squad, Pathman has become one of the United States’ top youth players. She led the U-18 team in scoring in 2010 and earned herself a spot on the roster for that year’s U-20 World Cup.
“It’s really an honor to put on the USA jersey,” Pathman said. “Growing up, it’s just been amazing to have that opportunity, and to be able to represent your country and play on the world stage is indescribable.”
This past year, Pathman continued to train with the youth teams, missing Duke’s game at Boston College for a U-23 training camp in the fall. Then, serving as captain, Pathman led the U-20 team to the U-20 Four Nations Tournament title in La Manga, Spain in February, and returned to action at the beginning of March for the CONCACAF tournament.
With national team commitments every month of the semester so far, Pathman has had to plan her academic workload accordingly.
“I kind of built my semester this year around my soccer, and I found professors that are so nice and so accommodating that are going to let me miss,” Pathman said.
Pathman also took advantage of her opportunity to travel to Spain and Panama.
“I got to practice my Spanish a little bit,” Pathman said. “My Spanish professor probably would be happy with that.”
For Pathman, though, the commitment is a yearlong one with two camps to go until the end of the school year, then summer training.
By making it to the championship game of the CONCACAF tournament, the United States also qualified for the U-20 Women’s World Cup, which takes place in Japan from Aug. 19 to Sep. 8.
While Pathman will again have to make up missed academic work, the third-leading scorer for the Blue Devils will also be missing the start of Duke’s season.
Nevertheless, the experience that Pathman and Anasi receive during their time with the national squad could help Duke become a better team. By playing the same formation with the U-23 national team that she plays for Duke, Anasi picked up on some ways to improve her play at the collegiate level.
“[Playing with unfamiliar players] allowed me to study the formation more, and I know way more about the 4-4-3 then I knew before I left for the camp,” Anasi said.
Serving as a defender rather than forward for the national team, Pathman picked up a number of things that she hopes to implement when playing for Duke.
“I really like on the national team how possession-oriented we were, and our goal is to be the fastest team in the world in our possession style,” Pathman said. “I think we can bring that into Duke. We do try to play a possession-oriented style here—I just think we can work on that and work on our pace of play.”
That emphasis on possession paid off for the American U-20 squad in the championship game. Despite falling behind early to Canada, the U.S. controlled possession and accumulated a 28-7 shot advantage, ultimately earning a 2-1 victory.
“We let up a goal early, in the first five minutes of the game and struggled to come back, but we kept in good spirits the whole game,” Pathman said. “It wasn’t until the last two minutes of the game that we ended up scoring our two goals, but it was great. A lot of us were crying, and I think it really brought us together as a team.”
The winning goal came from Ubogagu, who had come on in the second half as a substitute for another Blue Devil rival, Wake Forest’s Katie Stengel.
While rivals in the collegiate game, the training for youth national teams has fostered a strong bond with the nation’s top players for both Pathman and Anasi.
“We sometimes give each other a hard time, but we’ve been friends for years, and that goes deeper,” Pathman said.
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