Women's soccer team topples Duke for Dorrance

The No. 6 North Carolina women’s soccer team played for more than just soccer throughout its 3-0 victory over Duke on Sunday — they played for family.

The Tar Heels (10-2-1, 7-0-0 ACC) wore black armbands to show their support for head coach Anson Dorrance, whose mother passed away last week.

“We all care for each other; we all care about Anson; we all care about everyone’s family,” sophomore Emily Bruder said. “The black band represents our family on and off the field.”

The Tar Heels were led by the red-hot Bruder, who after scoring the first two goals of her career last week against Pittsburgh, added two more against the Blue Devils (7-7-1, 3-3-1 ACC) at Koskinen Stadium.

“I was so proud of Emily Bruder,” junior Katie Bowen said. “She’s been grinding at practice and she hasn’t gotten there at the start of the season but she’s got four goals in the past two games, so I’m really proud of her.”

Bruder’s first goal came in the 27th minute and gave the Tar Heels a lead they would never relinquish.

Bowen took the free kick and played the ball into the box, where Bruder was waiting to head it past the keeper.

Bruder said in the last practice leading up to Duke she worked on heading with one of the coaches, who told her she should utilize her size to be more aggressive on headers.

“The key thing that I learned was that you just need to be patient and wait for it to time it, and that was one of my problems early on this season with heading,” Bruder said. “This time when I saw it coming, I was patient, let it come and it turned out to be a goal, so that was nice.”

Dorrance said he wasn’t planning on starting Bruder in the second half, but because of her play in the first half he had no choice but to keep her in.

She rewarded him by tacking on her second goal in the 57th minute.

Junior Paige Nielsen played the ball over the top of the defense to a streaking Bruder. As the Duke goalkeeper charged to stop Bruder, she floated the ball right over the keeper to find the back of the net again.

“(Bruder) played well against Pitt to get a couple (of goals), so we played her a bit more today — got us a couple more,” Dorrance said. “We’ll continue to play her. If she keeps scoring, we’re going to keep expanding her platform to reward her for her outstanding effort out there.”

The Tar Heels capped off the afternoon with freshman Alex Kimball’s first career goal to take a 3-0 lead.

With the win over Duke, the Tar Heels extended their winning streak to nine games but most importantly were there for Dorrance when he needed them the most.

“The improvement of all the kids from the beginning of the season, the adversity we had, to put ourselves in this position, I’m just unbelievably excited and proud,” Dorrance said. “And then to see the kids wearing the armbands for me and my family was significant.”

sports@dailytarheel.com