Wake Forest Athletics News - Wake Forest University Athletics

Seniors Combine Varied Talents and Backgrounds for One Goal

Oct. 20, 2003

One thought she would play ice hockey as a collegian. Another was recruited more as a soccer player.

One had three former high school teammates play for the Demon Deacons and wanted to be part of the program, too. Another lived in British Columbia and admits that her decision to attend Wake Forest was a "shot in the dark."

The comparisons - or lack thereof - could go on and on. But what the five seniors on this year's Wake Forest field hockey team have proved is that different people with assorted skills, who are products of diverse backgrounds, can achieve great success by joining as one in pursuit of a single goal.

"Our class, we're all so different," Emily Ruth of Robesonia, Pa., says. "Some of us are leaders on the field; some are leaders in other ways. Yet we have come become a special group.

"I love my class."

Coach Jennifer Averill loves this class of seniors as well. And not just because they have been an integral part of a tremendous three seasons at Wake Forest - seasons that have seen the Demon Deacons play in three consecutive NCAA Final Fours, win the school's first-ever ACC title, and, of course, capture the NCAA Championship one year ago.

This year these seniors have led the program to a 31-game winning streak, dating back to last season, and the No. 1 ranking in the country.

Through the midway point of the 2003 season, their record is 66-12.

"Other very good players have come before, but this class has solidified the foundation of our program," Averill says. "I am so pleased with what they have accomplished and what they aspire to become. They have given me tenfold what I had expected.

"They have taught me about belief, trust and commitment - and how to have fun and enjoy what we're doing, too."

Kelly Doton, who had planned on pursuing an ice hockey scholarship while growing up in Greenfield, Mass., has achieved the most individual notoriety of the class. A first-team All-American and the 2002 ACC Player of the Year, she has been named to the NCAA all-tournament team in each of the past three years.

Her accomplishments, according to her coach, stem from a "refuse to lose" mentality.

"My teams never lost a lot in high school and when we lost a game here early in my career, it was devastating," Doton says.

"We've had good players continue to come into the program each year, and we've gotten better. Then last year we really developed a sense of team unity and understood that even if we didn't have the best skilled team, we could be the best 'team' team and overcome lots of obstacles."

Her teammate Emily Ruth epitomizes that quality, Averill says.

"Emily is one of the most dedicated athletes I've ever coached," the coach states. "She has started for us and has come off the bench. She'll do anything to please her teammates and our coaching staff."

That's why she came to Wake Forest, Ruth explains.

"I wanted to be part of a team that was up-and-coming and felt that with our class and the leadership that we received from the players that were here before us, we could achieve a lot. I could see it happening."

Katie Ackerman did, too. Former Deacs Samantha Rush, Jaime Tressler and Lynne Shenk had preceded her from Lower Dauphin High (Pa.) to Wake Forest. She was quite familiar with the program that Averill was constructing and was excited to make her own contribution.

"I knew they had been getting better every year, and I truly thought that a national championship would be within our reach," Ackerman says. "We've continued to grow each season and with every new class that comes in, we just pick up where we left off the year before."

Her coach notes that the Hummelstown, Pa., product has "come into her own" as a senior, while also referring to her as a "comedian" who keeps the team loose.

Ackerman is almost reflective, though, when discussing last year's national championship.

"Now that we've done it, it's so much better than I think I ever imagined," she says. "It's not just having won the title. It's realizing that all the work that so many people put into it paid off."

A player that Averill points to as personifying such commitment is Lucy Shaw, who came across the continent and international borders from her home in Vancouver to be a Demon Deacon.

"I didn't know much about the school but liked it after visiting," Shaw says. "It was long way from home, but I figured I'd try it and I could always change my mind later."

That obviously hasn't happened as Shaw has been a four-year starter and an All-ACC performer on the Deacon defense.

"Our success has come from a combination of good coaching and skilled players, but most of all from an ability to work together toward a common goal," she says. "We are accountable to one another and we work for one another."

Shaw and her teammates have achieved outstanding results as a unit, but the final line of defense for the Deacs is an individual - goalkeeper Katie Ridd - who ranked second nationally in 2002 with a goals against average of .725 per game.

Ridd was a standout in both soccer and field hockey as a prep athlete in Fairfax, Va., and was actually in North Carolina for a soccer tournament when she visited the WFU campus. Fate took over from there.

"We ended up staying in Winston-Salem an extra day after being involved in a minor auto accident," Ridd says, "and I think that additional time allowed me to decide that Wake Forest was where I wanted to go."

Just like her fellow seniors, it was a decision that she has never regretted, and her assessment of her class and the legacy that as a group they will leave with the field hockey program effectively summarizes the feelings of all five.

"Hopefully, people will look at our class as providing leadership that was a cut above. That we made competing not a chore. That we weren't out there just to win, but that we were there for each other."