JULIA PARK Staci Duncan overcame
frustration and is UCLA’s second all-time leading goal-scorer.
By Jeff Agase
Daily Bruin Staff
Her freshman year, she was UCLA’s leading scorer, a
freshman All-American and All-Pac-10. She even got a feature story
in the Daily Bruin.
Her sophomore year, she scored 10 goals, was All-Pac-10 and
again was featured in the Daily Bruin.
Her senior year, she scored the game-winning goal against
Stanford to clinch the Pac-10 title, became UCLA’s second
all-time leading goal scorer and, well, you get the trend.
And in Staci Duncan’s junior year? Well, she
was”¦
“Frustrated,” the senior forward said. “Here I
am, I’m a junior and I’ve started every game here. Like
any athlete, I wanted to be playing, but I wasn’t.”
The Bruins were creeping up the national rankings and on their
way to a first-ever berth in the Final Four, but Duncan was absent
from the starting lineup from mid-September on. She wasn’t
injured. She was replaced.
A slew of freshman talent brought in by head coach Jillian
Ellis, coupled with transfer forward Stephanie Rigamat’s
first year of UCLA eligibility, meant there simply wasn’t
space for Duncan up front.
“Sometimes players can get comfortable, and maybe Staci
got comfortable her junior year,” Ellis said. “The
younger players came in and really pushed all of the older players.
It was a nice sort of eye-opener for them, to see they can’t
just assume to play because they’re older players.”
For the first time in her life, Duncan wasn’t in the
starting 11. Humbled but undaunted, she still scored eight goals
and tallied three assists to place fifth on the team in scoring.
She wasn’t angry, but she needed encouragement.
“Jill made me feel like I was right there,” Duncan
said. “I just needed to keep working hard and keep doing what
I was doing.
“I talked to friends on the team, and they were there for
me as teammates and as friends. Without them, I don’t know
how I would have stayed in good spirits.”
Duncan was forced to come off the bench in every Bruin playoff
win, all the way through a national championship game loss to North
Carolina.
“It’s hard when you’re on a team with this
many talented people, and there’s such a small difference
between a lot of them,” senior defender Bethany Bogart said.
“Staci was so good about being positive, working hard and
doing what was best for the team.”
She provided a spark off the bench, but hers wasn’t one of
the names mentioned by opposing coaches after UCLA victories. She
also wasn’t mentioned when the All-Pac-10 teams were
named.
But that was OK with Duncan. She hadn’t ever been a part
of something as big as the 2000 Bruins.
“We were having such a successful season. It was great
just to be a part of it,” Duncan said. “Last year I
didn’t care where I was playing. We were going to the Final
Four, and I was excited.”
Come the offseason, Duncan had seen the Final Four. Now she was
ready to be one of the integral players to bring UCLA there again.
Realizing that she could no longer rely on her immense talent
alone, Duncan trained the entire summer to give herself a crack at
the starting job she once owned.
“I didn’t know if I was even going to play my senior
year, and then I thought, it’s all in my hands,” she
said. “I figured there was nothing I could control except how
hard I worked and how fit I came in, and so everything that was in
my control I took care of.”
But Duncan once again found herself coming off the bench. Then
in a difficult twist of fate, sophomore Lindsay Greco, one of the
freshman standouts that came in during Duncan’s junior year,
tore her ACL in practice and was lost for the season.
Duncan frowns each time she talks about Greco’s injury,
but her sorrow for the loss of her teammate hides her determination
to contribute after the team’s loss.
“It was an awful, awful thing and such a loss for our
team,” Duncan said. “Jill said, “˜You’re
doing great and you’re working hard.’ I felt like I was
up to it.”
“Up to it” has come to be something of an
understatement. Duncan entered the lineup Sept. 21 against the
University of San Diego and has remained there ever since. Her goal
in the 74th minute of the Bruins’ 1-0 victory over Stanford
gave UCLA its first unshared Pac-10 title since 1997, and
she’s third on the team in scoring.
It’s not quite the kind of “to hell and back”
story that belongs on “Behind the Music,” but when
Duncan talks about the pressures of playing this season as a
favorite (the Bruins debuted at No. 2 in the polls), one
can’t help but draw a parallel to her own personal experience
over the last two years.
“It’s so hard to stay on top,” she said.
“It gets harder but it gets better ““ harder to stay up
there but better to win.”