By John Roth, GoDuke The Magazine
DURHAM, N.C.-- Mollie Pathman is one of the few Duke students who went to bed last Feb. 8 with no knowledge of what happened in the Duke-North Carolina basketball game in Chapel Hill.
While the Blue Devils were staging their epic comeback, capped by
Austin Rivers' dramatic buzzer-beating 3-pointer, Pathman was 4,000 miles away from her jubilant campus, sound asleep at a hotel in La Manga, Spain, where she was about to begin play in an international soccer tournament.
Pathman awoke on Feb. 9 to a text message containing the basketball result and happily rolled over to announce the score to her roommate, who was less enthusiastic about the outcome — seeing as how her roommate was Crystal Dunn, a UNC soccer player. But on this trip, like many others, Pathman and Dunn were not rivals but teammates for the Under-20 U.S. National Team, an alliance that kept Duke's sophomore standout in perpetual travel mode throughout the 2012 spring semester.
The trek began in January in Carson, Calif., for a major training camp in which the U-20 national roster was solidified. In February it was on to Spain for the Four Nations Tournament, where the U.S. dominated the competition with three shutout victories. Then came the focal point of the spring, a March trip to Panama for the CONCACAF U-20 Women's Championship. With Pathman serving as team captain, the U.S. squad won all five of its matches to qualify for this summer's FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup.
That was followed in April by a return journey to California for another training camp, highlighted by a pair of wins over China.
All the while, as the U.S. racked up a 10-0-0 record, Pathman maintained a full academic course load at Duke, completing many assignments while on the road and working closely with her professors to stay on track.
“I probably missed five or six weeks of school with the four camps that I went to, but I was able to keep up,” said Pathman, a serious student who won the NCAA's Elite 89 Award for her sport last fall with her 3.912 grade point average. “It was difficult, but my professors were really agreeable and flexible with my schedule… We tried to work out before the semester started how I was going to make it up.”
After semester exams, Pathman was back in California for another camp in May and is coming off a trip to Japan for two exhibition matches.
There is much more training and travel on tap for the summer, culminating with a trip to Japan for the FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup. The 16-nation tournament will run Aug. 19 through Sept. 9, and the U.S. team should be a prime contender.
International travel in the name of soccer has become old hat for Pathman, a Durham native who helped lead the Blue Devils to the NCAA final last fall. She was barely a teenager when she made her first international road trip — to Costa Rica, as a 13-year-old playing for a regional Olympic Development Program squad.
Since then her passport has been stamped for soccer visits to Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain twice, Panama and Japan, as she has steadily climbed the age-group ranks of U.S. Soccer. Pathman has played for national teams at the U-14, U-16, U-17, U-18 and U-20 levels.
Two years ago, when she was finishing up her senior year at Durham Academy, Pathman trained with three different national teams on a schedule almost as hectic as the one she survived this spring, shuttling from the U-18s to the U-20s to the U-23s. Ultimately she made the final U.S. roster for U-20 Women's World Cup held in Germany the month before she enrolled at Duke. The U.S. lost in the semifinals. She and Dunn are among four current U-20s who were on that club.
“When I joined that team I made it at the very end, the last camp possible, and was there to sub in at different times,” said Pathman, who was 18 at the time and won't turn 20 until this July 1. “I was playing up, and I played more than I thought I would, but I wasn't an impact player. I think I fill a different role now. I think on this team, potentially being captain and starting, I have a different role and different responsibilities. Having been a part of this whole two-year cycle to make this has been a different experience.”
“A lot of people come and go — they come for one camp or two camps or they don't come for a year. But Mollie consistently has been at almost every camp at every age group on the national ladder, so that says she is darn good,” noted Duke head coach
Robbie Church.
“She's the type of person and player you want around these national teams. She's always a leader, one of the captains, always one of the girls who is going to stay late after a practice to work on her own game or help someone else work on their game. She's the first one to pick up cones, the first one to chase balls. As decorated as she is in U.S. Soccer, that's just the type of young lady she is.”
Pathman serves as a starter and leader for both the U.S. nationals and the Blue Devils, but she fills divergent roles for each. Her domestic notoriety is built around her offensive skill set as an attacking forward who totaled 130 goals for Durham Academy and has been one of Duke's top scorers the past two seasons. That side of her soccer personality helped her become the 2010 Gatorade national prep player of the year and an All-ACC second-teamer her first two years of college.
But when she adds red to her collegiate white and blue, Pathman's motives change. She becomes a defender charged with preventing goals, not scoring them.
“It's a good spot for me on the national team and it gives me the chance to attack out of the back and lead the team,” she explained. “I like playing different positions. When I come back to Duke, I'm excited to be at forward again. It's not the same old thing. Forward is my natural position, it's what I've always played. I've had no formal training at defense. But I think if I am going to make the full national team I'll make it as a defender, not a forward.”
“She's always been an attacking player and that has helped her as a defender,” added Church. “She has a mindset of what the attackers are looking for — are they looking to get inside, are they looking to get outside with it — so that helps her on the defensive side.”
When Pathman was not touring with the nationals or catching up on her academics this spring, her individual workouts were aimed at polishing her defensive game in preparation for the upcoming World Cup. Duke assistant coach
Billy Lesesne worked with her specifically on footwork and head balls because defenders have to be good in the air. Most of her strength and conditioning drills came directly from U.S. Soccer, although she often did them in conjunction with her Duke teammates.
“Robbie was great this semester,” Pathman said. “When we started off he said, 'I know you are a national team player, that's what you are going to do this semester. Don't worry about Duke and what we need — do what you need to do, and the same goes for the summer.' So I've been doing everything the national team wants me to do. In the fall when I start up with Duke again, I will obviously do what Duke wants me to do, but Robbie gave me a lot of freedom.”
One morning during exams, her U.S. workout assignment was a steady-state treadmill run in which she had to maintain a certain heart rate for 20 minutes based on her lactate threshold. That's an example of the way the latest in sports science impacts her individual training sessions on a daily basis.
“They (U.S. Soccer) can monitor every workout I'm doing here on a computer to see what I was doing at different times,” said Pathman, who is interested in studying sports medicine.
“Everything we do with the national team is very thought out, very methodical, because we have limited time together and limited funding. We wear heart rate monitors. We wear GPS trackers that track our speed or distance at all times. We do lactate running — tests that measure at what point our fitness switches from anaerobic to aerobic. We use high-speed cameras to measure our kicking. It's very technologically oriented.”
“We had to take care of some special needs she had by being with the national team,” Church acknowledged, “but what a wonderful opportunity for her. How many young ladies have the chance to win a world championship? There are only three in women's soccer — Under-17, Under-20 and full national. It's a win-win for everybody.”
Pathman's venture to Japan could have a direct impact on Duke's wins next fall, because she will miss the Blue Devils' first eight games of the season if the U.S. reaches the medal round the weekend of Sept. 8-9. If her Duke teammate
Kelly Cobb, who has been recovering from an injury, is officially added to the U-20 team this summer, that would deprive the Blue Devils of two key offensive weapons for the first month of the season. Church might even opt to rest them for the first match or two of the ACC campaign, after they return, so they will be fresher at the end of the season. His conference colleagues will be wrestling with similar decisions, as the U-20 team roster currently includes players from Florida State, UNC, Virginia and Wake Forest.
“Mollie will be here in August before she leaves for Japan, and a chunk of players will probably be staying at her house before the dorms open, so she will be involved with our team even if she won't be training with us,” Church said.
“On the other side, it's a great opportunity for other players in our program to step up. We have some talented players who haven't been able to get on the field as much as they've wanted to. Now, some of them will have a chance to really make an impact on our season. We're excited about that. We'll be fine.”
Pathman agrees, noting that the Blue Devils are in a good place coming off the 2011 ACC regular season title and College Cup run.
“That was very cool, but we're hungry and not satisfied,” she said. “We are fortunate to have so many returning starters and a lot of experience. We're motivated and really want the whole thing now.”
The same could be said of the team she'll travel with to Japan, just before she officially begins her third season as a Blue Devil.