Barraco, Sholder cross paths again
Brie Barraco and Meredith Sholder have crossed paths frequently over the years.
Usually, the path-crossing came in front of the field hockey net, where Barraco was a star goalkeeper for Parkland High and Sholder a record-setting goal scorer for Emmaus in the mid-2010s. Sholder’s teams always won the game, but sometimes Barraco won the battle inside the circle and sometimes Sholder did.
They crossed paths again in the NCAA Division I field hockey semifinals last November. Barraco tended the goal for Penn State, while Sholder played midfield for eventual national champion North Carolina. They met again on paper and on the NCAA website a month later: Both former Lehigh Valley stars were named to the NCAA Division I first team.
And they met again at the end of December, working a clinic with Madison Orobono (Emmaus, North Carolina), Rayne Wright (Liberty HS, U. of Maryland) and national team player Erin Matson, another Tar Heel who is from Chadds Ford and the NCAA Player of the Year. The LVHN Impact Athlete Clinic attracted about 150 girls.
Barraco and Sholder have something else in common beyond exceptional hockey stick skills and a love of growing the game by working with young players. They both may have a future in the medical field.
Barraco, who has one year of eligibility left at Penn State, studied kinesiology and exercise sports science. Medical school may be in her future too — her father, Dr. Robert Barraco, is a trauma surgeon at LVHN.
Sholder has graduated from UNC and has hopes of studying to become a physician’s assistant. She is currently volunteering in the burn unit in the UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Barraco was grading chemistry exams when she heard the news about becoming a first-team All-American. She was helping a professor who gave her the task because of her good grades in chemistry.
“It didn’t feel real at first,” Barraco said “I was working on chemistry exams when I got the notification that I as tagged in a [social media] post. I was almost crying. My phone started blowing up with texts from my family and teammates. I was really appreciative and humbled . ...
“My parents [Robert and Cheryl] were with me every step of the way. Recognition is not everything because there are great players not on that list.”
Sholder hopes she and Barraco are not the last All-Americans from the Lehigh Valley. Perhaps
they met and influenced a future star at the LVHN clinic and did not realize it.
“The Pennsylvania area and the Lehigh Valley area is such a hot spot for field hockey,” Sholder said. “I remember when I was younger, there would be clinics with high school girls and college girls. I went to their clinics and looked up to them so much. They inspired me to move along with field hockey and build my skills and develop as a player.
“We just want to keep building the sport and developing these players and show that more and more people can come out of the Lehigh Valley.”
As an 8-year-old Barraco earned a nickname that stuck while playing for the club X-Calibur: Cheese. Her twitter handle (@thecheesegoalie) reflects the name that a coach who could not remember her name called her. She doesn’t mind the nickname so long as no one calls her “Swiss cheese” when she surrenders a goal.
Barraco was originally interested attending Rutgers, her father’s alma mater, but a meeting with Stu Smith, a Penn State assistant and a coach in the U.S. Futures program, changed her mind after an official visit.
In 76 career games in Happy Valley she has a 1.54 goals-against average, including a stellar 1.17 this season. Barraco has a 75% save percentage with 12 shutouts.
She will begin working on a master’s degree next year and has one year left after the NCAA gave athletes one more year of eligibility because of COVID-19 in 2020.
Barraco wants at least one more season of crossing of paths with Sholder. While Sholder is on the U.S. National Team roster and will
leave for training in California on Jan. 8, Barraco was cut from the national development program last year but used it as motivation for this season. She had previously been on the national U19 and U21 teams.
“That really helped motivation going into this year,” she said. “I was pretty upset about it. I sat down and called [Penn State] assistant coach Laura [Gebhart], who does my goalkeeper training.
“I wasn’t going to let this define me. I’m going to work even harder this season. That’s exactly what I did. I was really proud of myself. … It was a 3-4-day tryout. Everyone who was selected was great.
“I was really able to focus on my play this year. It feels like a blessing in disguise because it was a real motivator. That’s still a dream even though I didn’t make it this year.”
Sholder had an interesting moment last year when UNC played the national team in a scrimmage. Greg Drake, then an assistant and now the head coach, gave her some encouragement.
She decided to go back to North Carolina and, lo and behold, she soon found herself on the U.S. National Team’s training roster. She will have the chance to make international trips while Team USA prepares for the Pan Am Games in late October and early November.
“Last year we scrimmaged the national team, the coach of the national team came up to me and spoke to me,” Sholder said. “He had eyes on me and told me to keep working hard.
“I thought, ‘What the heck? Why wouldn’t I want to stay in college for another year?’ I’d be able to play field hockey with the
best team ever. I felt really close with my teammates.”
The Tar Heels went undefeated for retiring coach Karen Shelton’s 10th national title (Sholder’s third).
Sholder is also the third Emmaus player to go from North Carolina to the U.S. National Team (Cindy Werley and Kristen McCann are the others). Sholder had 14 goals and 17 assists in 107 career games in Carolina.
Barraco said that she did experience some deja vu while watching Sholder play at midfield in the NCAA semifinals, a 3-0 Tar Heels win. The surrounding players and situation were different, but Sholder was still Sholder.
“This is how it felt in high school, obviously, but at a much faster pace,” Barraco said. “[Sholder] works great lines on the press, talks to her forwards, getting interceptions, and once she intercepted the ball carried [it] on angles, which is what you wanted to do. She just has great vision. I was reminded of her vision and knowledge of the game.
“It made me laugh in the middle of the game. Yep, this is what it felt like [in high school].”
“I remember when I played Parkland in high school,” Sholder said. “Brie was always the hardest to score on. Since I played forward in high school I always found myself in the circle.
“She’s an amazing goalkeeper. She’s done amazing things for Penn State. I’m really happy for her that she got All-American.”
From skirts to scrubs, who knows when the next meeting might be?