How does any one player win a week? This past Sunday alone, there were more than a hundred games involving Division I women's soccer teams. A full week offers at least twice that many. Game-winning goals, sprawling saves and last-ditch defending blur into one.
Sometimes, instead of focusing on the moment, it is best to imagine what will linger.
And decades from now, no one is more likely to fondly remember these past few days than Navy sophomore Anabell Motley, the espnW national soccer player of the week.
Such is the power of a rivalry that matters every year and in every sport.
Look, there were plenty of impressive individual performances this past week. No one piled up more tangible evidence than LSU's Jorian Baucom, who scored twice in an important SEC win over Mississippi and followed that up with her first career hat trick against Lamar. Or there was Arkansas defender Jessi Hartzler, who not only helped protect her goal but scored twice in her team's 2-1 upset of Florida and kept right on scoring against Lipscomb later in the week.
Each was outstanding in the present tense. So were others. But years from now, all of them will have to explain the circumstances to allow people to understand the accomplishment.
All Motley will have to do is say she beat Army.
Motley entered the week with career totals of one goal and two assists. She added two goals and an assist to those totals in the span of just 67 minutes on the field this past week.
Beginning with the goal that matters most in Annapolis in a 1-0 win over Army.
Army beat Navy the first five times the teams played women's soccer. Navy won the next six games. The series has since settled into the kind of back-and-forth tussle the lore of the rivalry demands. Of 28 total meetings, 18 were either decided by a goal or finished level. Each team's seniors entered Friday's game, fittingly, 1-1-1 in the series. It is that kind of rivalry.
So it wasn't just a nice bit of skill when Motley let a well-placed pass from Clare MacAdam roll in front of her as she ran down the right side after eight minutes Friday and used her first touch to drive a shot over the goalkeeper and into the back of the net. It was a perfectly executed bit of skill under pressure and in front of 2,347 fans -- almost five times a typical crowd.
The second goal of her college career held up as the winner.
Nor did Motley rest on her glory. Army vanquished, Navy still had to play a road game at Mount St. Mary's two days later. While not a conference game, a loss on the road would have left Navy four games on the wrong side of .500 for the season. If that seems a minor detail, consider that Navy hasn't finished a season with anything other than a winning record since 1994.
Even as Navy piled up shots Sunday, the game was scoreless as halftime approached. Then Motley again took a pass from MacAdam and beat the goalkeeper at close range in the 39th minute. She was there again when Navy found some breathing room in the 79th minute, assisting on Natalie Dzhandzhapanyan's goal that provided the final margin at 2-0.
