Something special was going AT WORK: Above, on in the Duke locker room. defender Tyler Carpenter and goal At that point, even having a tender Mike Adler; locker room was an upgrade. right, Joe Robertson “We didn’t have a locker room makes a gamein the fall,” said coach John winning goal against Danowski. “We didn’t have the Tar Heels. the traditional social time they’re used to having. Going to a football game, a women’s soccer game, going to the movies together. All those things that are synonymous with college living have all been removed,” because of COVID. Players wore masks in the weight room, came and went without socializing, adapted to the normal of the moment. The NCAA granting an extra year of eligibility to athletes whose 2020 seasons were cut short raised the potential for locker-room friction. A class of rising seniors, expecting their moment in the spotlight, suddenly had last year’s starters coming back. Add in the transfers, stars from other schools who graduated and then, with extra eligibility, took advantage of a sudden opportunity to play for an ACC championship, to chase a national title. The team ended up with fifty-six mem20 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
bers, where usually there are somewhere in the forties. A team that usually has a few graduate players this year had fourteen. Yet instead of churn, instead of resentment or frustration, the 2021 team came together, a team in every sense of the word. Uppgren explains. Given the opportunity to return— he had been a graduate student, earning a master’s from Fuqua; this year he completed his M.B.A.—he jumped: “I’d be here eight or ten years if I could.” But then “we found out there was going to be a ton of transfers, so we didn’t really know what was happening.” One of whom turned out to be one of the nation’s outstanding goalies. Uppgren was the goalie last year, a team captain the year before, and now… “How are you ready for something like that?” he asks. “There’s no playbook on it. So yeah, you’re literally just taken aback. And then I think the cool part is that initial reaction of, you’re not maybe thrilled or whatever, but then you get to meet these guys, and all that just goes out the window.” With Adler on the team, Uppgren had competition in goal, and every athlete accepts that someone wins and then you move on. He saw Adler’s Tweet after the Syra-