Kelly Cobb comes to Durham from Chugiak, Alaska, and for the first time in years, the No. 4 Blue Devils are ranked higher than their rivals down Tobacco Road. Any statistics professor will tell you not to mistake this correlation for causation, but one cannot help but wonder.
After all, the freshman leads the team in points, by a margin of 10, goals, by a margin of three, and assists. She ranks first nationally with five game-winning goals, and places in the ACC’s top-10 in almost all offensive categories, quickly becoming one of the most decorated freshmen in the country.
It might come as a surprise, then, that soccer was not her first love.
“As a kid, I started out with a million sports—ballet, tap dancing, gymnastics and ice skating,” Cobb said. “Then, around age eight, I finally started soccer. From there, I kind of stuck out from everybody else.”
The driving force behind her growth as a soccer player was her father, Gardner. A local sheriff and a former football player at the University of Cincinnati, Gardner knew the discipline and persistence required to become a Division-I athlete.
“My dad had an extensive background in sports,” Cobb said. “He knew what it takes to get to this level. He was instrumental in my growing and becoming successful.”
Like most other parents, Gardner was at all of his daughter’s soccer games, cheering Kelly on. He took his paternal duties to a new level, however, when he started bringing his own video camera to tape her games and practices. Her night was never over after she took off her cleats—she had to review the tape with her dad first. He also pushed his daughter to practice above and beyond what her coaches would schedule.
“She would do club soccer practices, and go to her father and he would do additional practices with her. He was Kelly’s biggest supporter,” Chugiak High School head coach Paul Brehmer said. “He organized her after-practice sessions. When she was younger, he hunted around for the right club teams for her to be on.”
As a result of her father’s diligence, Cobb started to stand out more and more among her peers. And due to her rare combination of size and speed, she developed a reputation for being able to find the back of the net. Kelly found her calling early as a center striker, and never changed.
“When she was younger, you try to get all of the players to try all of the positions. But from a pretty young age, she liked to be a forward, take the ball and score,” Brehmer said. “She was the most dangerous player we had on the team. She tried different midfield positions, but her job on the team never changed. She was always in charge of attacking the goal and scoring.”
Cobb’s talent never showed any signs of diminishing. She went from being a 12-year-old playing in a 14-year-old league to representing the United States with the U-20 National team in Spain merely five years later. In her free time, she also starred on her high school and club teams. In 15 games as a senior, she recorded 22 goals for Chugiak High School, leading the program to its first Region IV championship in school history. At the close of the season, she garnered Alaska’s Gatorade Player of the Year honors.
Her skills, predictably, caught the eyes of Duke head coach Robbie Church. In a recruiting battle that included other giants such as North Carolina and Notre Dame, Cobb eventually decided to take her talents to Durham. While here, the freshman is not taking anything for granted. Although she has the potential to go pro, she wants a degree that will prepare her for her other professional aspiration—nursing.
“My number one [reason for choosing Duke] is academics,” Cobb said. “I am getting a really good education. That degree is really important to me.”
And the Blue Devils could not be happier call her one of their own. Her ability to put points on the board has transformed Duke into a national contender. In her favorite goal of her fledgling Duke career, she scored the game-winner against then-No. 1 Notre Dame in an upset that caught the nation’s attention.
“[Cobb] fills a role that the Duke program has been lacking in the past few years, a pure goal-scorer,” Church said. “We’re extremely grateful to have her.”
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