Kaitlyn Kerr has had three surgeries in the last three years on her left knee. Although she runs back and forth across the field as one of Duke’s starting midfielders, the fastest she ran this weekend might have been on Saturday, in between the Blue Devils’ games on Friday and Sunday.
She was not chasing a soccer ball, but rather the band Timeflies—which has a new Extended Play album coming out in October—as it drove away after it performed as the lead act in Duke’s Heat Wave concert Saturday.
“And to the girl chasing the car. Respect,” the band tweeted.
But Kerr is not alone in her affection for the band—much of the Duke women’s soccer team has grown fond of the musical duo. The team’s entrance song for home games at Koskinen Stadium this year is Timeflies’ song “Stand by Me.”
In the week leading up to the concert, members of the team began tweeting the hashtag #kickitwithcal, trying to gain attention from the band’s lead singer Cal Shapiro. In addition to Kerr, teammates Kelly McCann, Libby Jandl, Avery Rape, Kim DeCesare, Callie Simpkins and Katy Colas all used the hashtag, with Shapiro eventually replying to Jandl saying, “word?! Let’s kick it.”
“We found him about a year ago on YouTube, and me, Laura Weinberg and a couple of us fell in love with him because we think he’s so cute,” Kerr said. “We just always followed him and wanted him to come play a concert.”
So when the Duke women’s soccer team heard that Shapiro and the band’s producer Rob Resnick were performing on campus, the team made sure to get their attention. And the concert happened to fall on the date of their home soccer tournament.
Although the band could not attend either of the matches—they were not in town yet for Friday’s game and departed too early Sunday—they have no shortage of respect for the team, which they knew made the NCAA finals last season.
Coming from Tufts, the pair said they appreciate getting to see top-flight athletic programs, something that was missing from their collegiate experience.
“Now that we’ve been traveling around seeing all these schools, we’re jealous of the Division I rah-rah aspect of college,” Shapiro said. “It was kind of hard to watch at our school.”
But since the duo has heard about the Blue Devils’ affinity for them—describing the choice of ‘Stand by Me’ as “really cool”—they have found a new team. The pair also expressed excitement about how the team painted “DWS wants to #kickitwithcal” on the bridge near East Campus on Campus Drive.
“We’re big Duke women’s soccer fans.” Shapiro said.
Although the members of Timeflies could not attend either of the Blue Devils’ contests during the weekend—which they won by a combined score of 9-3—the band did not forget about their biggest fans on campus during the concert.
Although Heat Wave was postponed a few hours Saturday during the rain, Kerr and other members of the team waited it out to see their favorite band perform. And, when the band performed a freestyle rap, Shapiro made sure to give a give their biggest fans some love, singing, “We had to shout it out to kick it with Duke soccer.”
“We’re obsessed with them,” Kerr said.
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