Tar Heel rookie strikers lend spark to soccer team

Sometimes even the rookie has expectations to live up to.

When coach Anson Dorrance came up to first-year Merritt Mathias at a team dinner to tell her she'd won a starting spot for Sunday's game against Kentucky she already had a standard to beat.

Her teammate and fellow first-year striker Courtney Jones took only 49 minutes to score her first career goal in the season opener.

So after taking Jones' spot Mathias had the daunting task of matching her performance — or dropping back down to the bench.

But instead of slipping out of the lineup Mathias set her own standard. It was one of the first signs of what could be an intense competition among the cache of first-year strikers: only four minutes in Mathias corralled a loose rebound from 15 yards out spun and nailed the ball high past the keeper's fingertips.

Although Mathias and Jones aren't in a face-to-face rivalry the two are in competition by nature. Dorrance recruited six new strikers for 2008-09 despite the fact that two of the three forward starting spots are locked down by juniors Casey Nogueira and Nikki Washington.

The roster switch for the match against Kentucky was only the beginning of the struggle for that last spot and some are just starting to get time in. First-year Brittani Bartok sporting banana-yellow cleats had her first minutes Sunday.

It's an unforgiving environment to start out in as a rookie and though Mathias and Jones seemed to have warmed to the transition of high school to college player remarkably well" nerves still can be an issue.

""I mean" starting you've done it all through your career Mathias said. It's just playing out here" being on Fetzer is what you get nervous about.

""All the greats have come through here"" so you have to come out and perform.""

The early lead gave the Tar Heels the chance to play nearly the entire roster during the 4-0 rout. Late in the second half" Dorrance even put three first-years in at once while resting Mathias and fellow starters Nogueira and Washington.

Those three — Jones Bartok and Emmalie Pfankuch — struggled against the Kentucky defense Sunday" but Dorrance intends for them to continue to get game time.

""These are kids we're investing in for the future"" Dorrance said. They're not going to play as much in critical games.

""But I think these are kids that are going to start in the future"" and we're just trying to give them more and more minutes to build their confidence because eventually — trust me — they'll be a part of the starting forward line.""



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