Nov. 20, 2009
By Neil Amato, TarHeelBlue.com
Casey Nogueira is not the sort of player who speaks up before every big game or makes sure everyone's touching all the lines during conditioning.
So by-the-book leadership is not her thing. Big deal. Nogueira leads in her own way. "Ringleader" might be a more accurate description.
Nogueira, a senior forward for the Carolina women's soccer team, is critical to the Tar Heels' success; look first at her stats in Women's College Cup games to confirm that.
She's also the one who wants the offseason, the practices, even the moments just before the national championship game to be fun. If this team is a Cyndi Lauper compilation, Nogueira's song is "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."
That's soccer to her. It's not her job, though she wants it to be after college. It's not a chore - never has been, despite years of playing. Give her a ball, a pair of cleats and a few willing counterparts, and she's happy.
"It's cool cause I never really get sick of it," Nogueira, 20, says. "I don't know why, but I have just a joy to play."
Some of that joy is undoubtedly genetic. Her father, Victor Nogueira, is one of the game's celebrated goalkeepers, playing first in South Africa and then in multiple U.S. pro leagues. On a Web site for a camp he runs, he recalls playing three games in a day growing up.
Her father coached her on boys' teams until her early teen years and though he now lives in San Diego, Casey talks to him regularly and says he's been vital in helping her as a player. "He still is a huge influence," she says.
Pam Nogueira remembers her daughter, well before the age of 10, spending hours in the backyard. The love of soccer was there, but so was the drive to master the game.
"When she decided she was going to do something, she'd stay at it for hours," Pam Nogueira says. "She decided she was going to juggle, and I wouldn't see her for four hours. She'd take a clipboard and make up all these drills she'd do.
"The big joke was no balls in the house, and it was attached to her foot. Casey and the ball are a single unit."
Nogueira grew up in Cedarburg, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb, first playing on a team called the Missiles. She wore her hair short as a tween, and opponents sometimes didn't find out until later that the player who had just carved them up was a girl.
Nogueira was 14 when she first attended UNC's summer camp. She remembers loving the soccer and deciding then she wanted to be part of the tradition. Coach Anson Dorrance remembers being wowed by Nogueira's skill.
Nogueira moved to North Carolina after a year of high school in Wisconsin. She starred for two seasons at Raleigh's Broughton High, graduated a year early and was playing for the Tar Heels at age 17.
She started just one game that first season, but she was a presence when the pressure was on. She scored the winning goal in both the NCAA semifinal against UCLA and the title game against Notre Dame.
Two years later, in 2008, she was the consensus national player of the year, capping her 25-goal season in the NCAA final with two picturesque scores - one with each foot - in a 2-1 victory over Notre Dame. The Tar Heels were almost late taking the field because Nogueira was playing ringleader again, insisting the team keep up its pregame dancing ritual.
"Anson talked over his allotted time," she says. "So we had to go over in our dancing time."
Now, as the Tar Heels try to continue their advance in NCAA play with a third-round game against Maryland, Nogueira shrugs off the notion that she's a big-game player. "The goals, I was in the right place at the right time," she says.
Dorrance sees it differently.
"Her skill and her compassion to just pound a soccer ball are unparalleled," Dorrance says. "She has every conceivable soccer tool available."
Nogueira's enthusiasm for soccer is one quality any great program must have in abundance, Dorrance says, but he'd like her to have more of an edge, especially as she moves to higher levels of competition.
In December, she's scheduled to train again with the U.S. National Team. In January, she will be chosen in the Women's Professional Soccer draft. On the horizon are the Women's World Cup (2011) and the Olympics (2012).
Nogueira figures to be in the mix for spots on those rosters. Dorrance thinks she would cement her role if her love for the game would morph into more of a desire to dominate.
"If she could become competitive, she could go from this girl who loves the game to the best player in the world," Dorrance says. "Michael Jordan loved to play basketball as much as she loves to play soccer, but the difference is he wanted to beat everyone to death in basketball and Casey doesn't.
"There's one piece she has to appreciate and respond to. She's got to find a way to hit a competitive button. All the great ones are able to find this button and hit it whenever they need it. If she does that, she becomes a Michael Jordan and ascends to whatever level she wants."
There's the rub: If the game becomes too competitive, does Nogueira still love it? When it comes down to it, she just wants to play. The game doesn't have to be on ESPN, with a trophy at stake. It could be anywhere.
It could be with kids less than half her age.
On a humid summer evening in late June, Nogueira ventured out to Fetzer Field alone - no, not alone, because she had her ball and cleats. A local track club's weekly summer meet had adults trying to reclaim lost fast-twitch fibers; some children roamed the center of the field, kicking soccer balls. They were introduced to Nogueira, who took a genuine interest in their names, ages and - of course - whether they liked soccer.
For the next 40 minutes, Nogueira made up games for the kids and wowed them with her skills - the juggling she first worked on as a kid of the same age back in Wisconsin; high, booming kicks with both feet; dribbling unscathed through a maze of tiny, giggling pursuers.
Casey Nogueira, a soccer pied piper, has her followers. Guess that qualifies her as a leader.
