The year after the Yankees and Babe Ruth parted ways, Lou Gehrig had one of the least productive seasons of his career. That 1935 campaign was still a fantastic season by any other player’s standards — 30 home runs, 119 RBI and a 1.049 OPS — but it wasn’t up to his standards, particularly coming off one of the most productive season of his career the year before in 1934. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Yankees failed to win at least 90 games for the first time in five seasons.
The downturn didn’t last; Gehrig rebounded by winning AL MVP in 1936 and reeled off back-to-back monster seasons before the effects of the disease that now bears his name brought his playing career to an end by the close of the decade. But the first season sans Ruth was a challenge.
Fast forward seven decades and compare apples to apples, and we need only look at how Casey Nogueira, Whitney Engen, Tobin Heath and North Carolina fared the season after Heather O’Reilly graduated — the lull in the middle of three national championships for the former trio’s class — for another example of the same phenomenon. O’Reilly graduated, the Tar Heels, by their standards, stopped scoring and the season ended short of the College Cup.
It’s not easy to replace a legend, even for someone bound to earn their own place in the history of a sport.
As her senior season begins, Stanford’s Christen Press doesn’t have the luxury of an adjustment period. She gets one crack at replacing Kelley O’Hara as the face and pulse of the Cardinal before some WPS teams presumably happily scoops her up for the next decade.
So it’s not a suggestion offered lightly that if Friday’s game against Boston College is any indication, Press may just pull it off.
“She has phenomenal skill, a great shot, fantastic placement ability — she can scores with half a yard,” Stanford coach Paul Ratcliffe said leading into the game. “And she’s a competitive kid; she loves to score. She’s one of the best finishers I’ve seen in the women’s game and one of the most skillful.”
Press didn’t score in a 1-1 draw against the Eagles, but she made an early Hermann Trophy statement nonetheless. She was the best player on the pitch — even ahead of Boston College keeper Jillian Mastroianni, who played one of the best games I can remember seeing from a college keeper. In fact, it took Herculean efforts from Mastroianni and Boston College’s back line, particularly junior Alaina Beyar, to keep Press off the scoreboard on a night when she could have had two or three goals with a bit of luck and a bit less commitment from the defense.
“She kept coming off our back line and it definitely confused us because we didn’t know if we should step or let her go,” Boston College defender Alyssa Pember explained. “She just comes at you. You’re running backwards, she’s running forwards — it’s just hard.”
That sounds like a simple explanation at first listen, but there’s really nothing complicated about why Press is so good (stopping her is rather more complicated). She operates with the kind of speed and power that breaks down the reaction time built into the college game. She’s one of the fastest players in the nation — if not the winner in a 40-yard dash, she is certainly a good bet to win any competition involving the combination of speed and ball control. She demands defenders stick close to her and punishes them for not giving themselves any cushion.
What Pember was saying is that when Press does what every opposing forward does, the end result just doesn’t look the same.
Already climbing the career charts at Stanford in goals and assists, Press has three years of statistical proof to back up her resume as one of the best players in college soccer. But there’s more to the task than that.
Consider what Boston College coach Alison Kulik said earlier in the week about O’Hara’s impact on Stanford’s 3-1 win when the teams met in the NCAA tournament.
“I thought she was the key to that Stanford team,” Kulik said. “She’s the heart and soul and has tremendous ability, so I think she got away from us, and I think she caused us a lot of problems. I think sometimes when you have such a passionate kid as Kelley O’Hara, and she’s playing for her last game, she can take over games.”
That’s the challenge awaiting Press this season, to be what O’Reilly was for North Carolina, what Amy Rodriguez was for USC, what O’Hara was for Stanford.
She’s going to have a lot of help — just as those players did. And how Lindsay Taylor, Teresa Noyola, Allison McCann, Sydney Payne, Rachel Quon, Camille Levin (Pac-10 coaches must break out in a sweat every time they look at Ratcliffe’s roster) play in the attack will have plenty to do with if Stanford gets to the College Cup and how long it stays in Cary.
But this is Press’ team and carrying that weight isn’t the easiest thing for a player to do — even one who scored 21 goals last season. Press didn’t start her goal total Friday against Boston College, but she started making this her team.
“What she’s done all three years here at Stanford, if you look at her stats and what she’s done for this team, has been incredible,” Stanford coach Paul Ratcliffe said. “I think she’ll do it again this year. … She has some good players up there with her, as well — some good midfielders to play-make to her. She’s going to be one of our leaders this year, a captain, so I have high expectations for her.”
Graham Hays 