Local connections in Women’s World Cup.
U.S. team’s Dahlkemper, Davidson are Sacred Heart Prep grads
ATHERTON » Five days after Abby Dahlkemper took the pitch at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, the U. S. women’s national team lineup also included Tierna Davidson.
Today in the quarterfinals, a tightknit community from the Peninsula will tune in to watch the Americans take on the host nation in Paris with a common bond: Dahlkemper and Davidson both are graduates of Sacred
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United States vs. France, quarterfinals, at Paris, today, noon, FOX Heart Prep, a school of about 600 boys and girls in Atherton.
“They are still our girls,” said Frank Rodriguez, the assistant principal of athletics at SHP. “We just get to share them with the whole country now.”
He added: “I would wager that we’re probably the only high school or prep school in the country that has two players on the World Cup team.”
Dahlkemper, a 2011 graduate of SHP, is expected to play in her fifth game today as an anchor of the defense. It’s a role she excelled at as a 5-foot-7 center back at UCLA, where she won a national title as a junior in 2013.
Davidson, a 2016 graduate and the youngest player on the roster at 20, was in the lineup — right alongside Dahlkemper — for the game against Chile on June 16. The 5-foot-10 left back, who won an NCAA title as a sophomore at Stanford in 2017, recorded a pair of assists off curling
corner kicks that Julie Ertz and Carli Lloyd finished with headers for goals in the 3- 0 triumph.
“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that we all knew Abby and Tierna would be representing the United States in a World Cup,” said Armando del Rio, the boys soccer coach at SHP for the past nine years. “But I guess we kind of overlooked that they’d be doing it at the same time.”
Del Rio is in Paris along with his 7-year- old daughter and 8-year- old son to watch today’s quarterfinal. The junket includes dinner plans this weekend with Jake Moffat, who coached Dahlkemper at SHP.
Moffat and his 14-yearold daughter were on hand for the games against Chile and Sweden and will stay through the finals.
“There are a ton of American fans here and a bunch are from SHP,” he reported via email.
“All of us feel an extra connection when they’re out there,” del Rio said. “I feel like for us it’s very sentimental, very special.”
Flashbacks to SHP
Burgeoning with worldclass potential, Dahlkemper’s breakout season came as a sophomore at SHP. She had 17 goals and 13 assists primarily as a midfielder to help SHP claim its firstever Central Coast Section girls title.
“If you watched her in high school, I was still in awe of her ability to make passes 30, 35 yards up the field and catching a teammate in perfect stride to score or make an assist,” Rodriguez said. “And if you watch the way the U.S. plays out of the back, she still is that player.”
Watching Dahlkemper play in the World Cup, Moffat is having flashbacks to the years he was her coach at SHP.
“Absolutely!” he wrote. “I recognize her gait, the angles she takes to the ball and the way she strikes the ball — all very distinctive.”
But was it possible to foresee a prep school, let alone one with a modest enrollment, produce two players in the same World Cup?
“No, absolutely not,” Moffat wrote. “It is not enough to be a great player, you also have to have some luck and you need to stay healthy. To get two from one school is almost unheard of — and SHP is not a soccer factory, so wow!”
Dahlkemper, 26, overcame a sepsis infection in her foot contracted at the end of 2016, just after earning her first cap with the national team.
Davidson was limited to nine games her senior year of high school because of a foot injury. She had led SHP to CCS titles as a sophomore and junior — amassing 27 goals and 22 assists in the latter.
“T is just so dynamic,” said Ramiro Arredondo, who coached her at SHP. “I think her soccer IQ is so high that you can ask her to play center back, left back, center mid, attacking mid. She’s so smart and she makes the game so simple for everyone around her.”
“She was everywhere on the field,” Rodriguez said. “She has deceptive speed, long strides and she can close on anybody.”
Davidson’s junior season at Stanford ended after three games when she broke an ankle. Instead of returning to school, Davidson declared for the National Women’s Soccer League draft, where she went No. 1 overall to the Chicago Red Stars.
None of this surprises Arredondo. When Davidson was a junior at SHP, he told Davidson’s mom that her daughter would someday play in the World Cup.
“She didn’t believe me,” Arredondo said.
When they’re in town, Dahlkemper and Davidson frequently drop by the SHP campus to train with the boys.
“It’s fun to have a local superstar to train with us,” del Rio said.
“They don’t have to come to back to Sacred Heart, but they do,” Rodriguez said..” And it makes me feel good that our community is still important enough to them to (do it).”
Rodriguez left Thursday for a long-planned golf trip with his brothers. But he has no intention of missing the action in Paris.
“I have an early-morning tee time, and if that’s conflicting with the game against France, we’re playing in the afternoon,” he said.