Stout goalkeeping stops Tar Heels

When the No. 1 North Carolina field hockey team took on its Tobacco Road rivals, No. 9 Duke Friday, the Blue Devil’s goalie Lauren Blazing held a career-high of nine saves.

Twenty-eight minutes into the game, she had passed that record, and it was safe to say that Blazing was on fire.

By the time the final whistle echoed through Henry Stadium 72 minutes later, Duke had knocked off UNC 3-2 in an overtime shootout, and she had torched her personal best, replacing it with a titanic twenty-two saves.

Afterwards coach Karen Shelton was quick to tip her hat to Duke’s keeper.

“We had plenty of chances,” Shelton said, referring to UNC’s 37 shots in the game. “But credit goes to Duke’s goalie. I think Lauren Blazing was outstanding today. Twenty-two saves on the day — that’s an impressive statistic. We’ve got to get better at finding a way to beat a hot goalie.”

Despite UNC’s offensive onslaught being relentlessly rejected, Shelton said she hoped Blazing’s performance between the posts didn’t affect her players’ mindset.

But sophomore Emily Wold — who notched five shots on goal without a score — admitted that wasn’t so.

“It’s definitely really frustrating when you have a bunch of shots on the keeper and none are going in,” Wold said.

Even though her coach and teammate gave a nod to Duke’s keeper, UNC’s goalie, junior Sassi Ammer, wasn’t quick to give her dark blue counterpart all the credit.

“I think she played awesome, of course,” Ammer said. “But we just need to work on our scoring opportunities, … Don’t give her too much credit for our bad play.”

Aside from a quick counter offense that yielded mismatches, Duke received four cards during the game, giving UNC a total of 17 minutes of man-up play that it was unable to capitalize on.

And after the second 15-minute sudden-death overtime period concluded without yielding a goal, UNC faced an unfamiliar situation — a shootout.

Since its inception two years ago, North Carolina has never seen a game through to a penalty shootout, and Shelton didn’t believe they would.

But while they were novices to the situation, the Tar Heels didn’t act like it, and after three players from both sides had shot, UNC and Duke were tied 3-3.

Senior Rachel Magerman started to make her move on the Duke goalie for UNC’s fourth shot, but Blazing quickly dove stick-first at the ball and managed to knock it away, ending UNC’s try.

Duke eked out a 5-4 shootout win and mercifully, after two and a half hours, both teams walked away from a game that seemed unwilling to end.

Though her team had just been handed its first loss of the year, the ever-optimistic Shelton saw the game as just another learning experience.

“I do think Duke fought hard, I thought it was a great game,” She said. “I think both teams take away from this. They just take away the W.”

sports@dailytarheel.com