For six players on Duke women’s lacrosse, this season is five years in the making.
This year marks the final season of eligibility for graduate students Katie Cosgrove, Abby Landry, Catriona Barry, Katie Cronin, Natalie Kahn and Chase Henriquez. Though they came to Durham as a squad of 10 freshmen, due to several teammates transferring programs or deciding not to take the final eligibility year, the size of the group fell to six.
Helping shape the program into the current mold today, the graduate students are hoping that this season is unlike any other one they have experienced thus far—after all, it is the last hurrah.
“They’ve been on the field since they were freshmen—so I think a little bit [of the reason they chose to stay] is unfinished business,” head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “I think a lot of it is loyalty, that, and chemistry. I think that you know—it’s hard for me. I was looking at some pictures last night when this crew was freshmen; it feels like they’ve been here forever. It’s gonna feel very different when they’re not here next year.”
Flashback nearly four years ago—Feb. 11, 2018—and nine of 10 freshmen experienced their first college match in the season opener. Heading into the contest ranked 20th in the nation, the Blue Devils took on No. 21 Elon at Cohan Turf Fields. Duke tallied an 8-point victory against the Phoenix when all was said and done. Midfielders Barry and Landry were starters in the match. The former finished with two assists, two draw controls and one caused turnover. The latter also had a caused turnover—but like the rest of her fifth-year teammates, this contest wouldn’t be their breakout game by a landslide.
Building the team
For Division I women’s lacrosse, the chemistry starts building as soon as the calendar hits Sept. 1 of a player’s junior year of high school—when student-athletes and college coaches are permitted to begin contacting each other. No. 22-recruit Barry was eager to join the Blue Devils, committing to Kimel’s squad Sep. 1, 2015.
“I think it’s funny, you know, Cat Barry was kind of a superstar out of California, and there’s not a lot of lacrosse in California….She always had her sights set on Duke, and she’s really lived up to the bill,” Kimel said. “....We don’t have captains per se, but we do these leadership surveys at the end of the fall semester—and the last two years, she has maxed out on those surveys. "She’s just such a hard worker. She cares. She does the right things. She’s not afraid of hard situations.”
As the first commit for the class of 2021, the All-American would soon be joined by eight other members of her recruiting class, where they would have the opportunity to get to know each other on and off the field for nearly two years before becoming teammates. Besides their commitment to lacrosse, many of the future Duke stars were also multi-sport athletes. Kimel added that it is “really hard to turn down those kids in today’s world,” as they bring a different level of versatility and domination along with them.
It wasn’t until the group got to Duke in August of 2017 that the 10th member of the team, Henriquez, a two-time Massachusetts state champion and member of the Under Armour Underclass New England Team, would finish the roster as a walk-on. Though Henriquez didn’t get the level of playing time that her other freshmen teammates would for the first few years, in the 2020 and 2021 seasons, the goalie would find herself in a more prominent role for the Blue Devils. She started seeing significant minutes on the field during this time, registering nearly 600 minutes between the pipes across those two seasons.
“You know, to be truthful, she hasn’t necessarily been a starter for us for four years, like the other kids have. She’s been kind of in and out of the cage in different roles for us,” Kimel said. “....I think [her returning for a fifth year] is a testament to the kids on the team and the program she wanted—she was like, ‘I don’t want to be 50 years old, and look back and think, why didn’t I do this?’”
From rookies to veterans
For the next four years on the team, the six graduate students would see a lot of different numbers on the field.
In their first season in 2018, the team went 9-8 overall, finishing with a 2-5 slate in the ACC with losses to programs such as Notre Dame, North Carolina, Virginia and Boston College. Despite that, the Blue Devils tallied a big win to show the potential they had to pose in future battles, finishing with a 9-8 win against No. 11 Northwestern early in the year, a game in which Barry assisted in by garnering three draw controls. Alas, the singular victory wouldn’t be enough to prove that this season would be when the group would break out.
However, when they returned to competition in 2019, the Blue Devils had a little more momentum on their side, finishing 11-8. Yet again, Duke’s slate in the ACC ended at 2-5; the team faced defeat again by the opponents that beat them the previous year.
“They’ve been through some tough times here, where we didn’t see success,” Kimel said about the difficult first two seasons. “[Their first few years were nothing like] the success that we saw in 2021 and 2020 before the season ended.”
In the 2020 season, Duke got to play nine games before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the rest of the contests. In that shortened slate, the Blue Devils etched a 6-3 record and garnered a big 16-10 triumph against No. 12 Virginia before their March 14 contest against No. 9 Penn, and the subsequent matches got canceled. Landry, Cosgrove, Barry and Kahn started in each of the competitions. Barry had her biggest career game early in the season against No. 3 Northwestern, tallying four goals. She would have two more four-goal performances that year against Wofford and No. 15 Navy.
Back for their first full year since 2019, the Blue Devils returned to play at Koskinen Stadium in 2021 ranked 15th in the preseason poll, and with a bang. The group attained three straight wins, including a 12-8 victory against No. 18 Virginia Tech, before facing its first loss to No. 1 North Carolina. Duke remained competitive throughout the season, going 11-8 again and notching a more successful 4-6 conference record.
The Blue Devils may have lost the first round of the ACC tournament to No. 5 Notre Dame in a 17-16 heart-breaker, but they also got the furthest they had been in the NCAA Championships in years. Duke may not have finished in the Final Four, but it did defeat the historically winningest team in the league, 14-time national champions Maryland.
The Duke degree
Besides the pull of a deep program via chemistry and expertise, the players chose Duke because of its opportunities. Not only do the fifth-years get to enjoy one final season under the helm of Kimel, but they also get a world-class business education.
“The girls talk about how it’s so different than the undergraduate experience, which it is in a very in a good way and healthy way, but it’s also very challenging,” Kimel said about the Master of Management Studies program for graduate athletes at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke’s business school.
“These girls are really bright, they’re great students, but they are challenged in that program. And I think that they really love that as well. They’re really tested, and obviously, the degree and the connections that you get from Fuqua opened up a lot of doors for [them],” Kimel said.
‘Better place than they found it’
Exactly four years since they first took the field in that big win against Elon, the fifth-year students will compete in the home-opener against Gardner-Webb. The Blue Devils have a lot of goals for what’s to come this season, but one of the main things they want to do is enjoy it on their terms.
With the deep roster this year has in store, the group has the potential to go far. Duke starts the season as the No. 8 team in the nation, and with that a reputation to uphold. The Blue Devils are ready to “firmly re-establish as a perennial top-10 program that’s competing for a national championship and an ACC championship every year,” Kimel said.
The five years of experience the group of graduate students bring with them will be impactful on and off the field for the eight joining freshmen athletes who Kimel says she’s “not coaching down to…. They’re having to play catch up in a big way.”
With the group’s skills built up across its time at Duke and the chemistry all the players have with each other, the Blue Devils’ hope of being competitive in the NCAA tournament picture is a reality.
“[The graduate students] want to win every game. They want to win a championship, both conference and national championship, but I also think they want to do it the right way,” Kimel said. “They understand because of their kind of vast experience—it’s a process. They want to earn it, they don’t want it to be given to them. They understand what it takes. I think that they want to leave the program in a better place than they found it.”
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