Murphy – Usually the BodyArmor games, an event that features more than 12,000 athletes across 30 different sports in the state, does not include graduating high school seniors.
However, this year they were allowed to participate after last year’s event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Class of 2021 Murphy High School alumna Chloe Decker took advantage, playing on the West Team along with rising junior Catalina Barreiro. Rising sophomore Lailee Hollaway was also selected to play on the team but didn’t participate.
“It was a lot of fun,” Decker said. “I got to play with and against some of the highest level of soccer that I’ve really seen.”
Decker was encouraged to try out by girls soccer head coach Kim Brownlee in previous years and wasn’t planning to try out this year until both Hollaway and Barreiro did. At the initial tryouts, there weren’t enough players to fill out a team, and Scott Cline, who is the head coach at Swain County and had the same role for the West Team at the games, told Brownlee that Decker could join the team if she was interested.
Decker decided she wanted to play. For her, the event was like one last travel soccer weekend which she had plenty of during middle school and early high school. First, though, she had to get back into some playing shape. She initially thought the last game of her soccer career was Murphy’s 5-1 loss to Swain County on April 30.
“We had a few practices over in Swain County to get ready, and after the first practice I was like, ‘Wow these girls are really good,’ ”Decker said. “I got on the treadmill and started working out a little bit to get ready.”
On June 19-20, Barreiro and Decker played as part of the West Team at the event, which took place at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary. They finished in second place out of the four regions.
Though the West Team struggled to fill out a full roster for the event, both Brownlee and Decker said the players were very good, and the quality of play was better than what’s usually found in western North Carolina. For a lot of the girls playing, soccer is their main sport and they play on high level club teams. That level of soccer hasn’t quite permeated into this area of the state yet.
“It’s a lot different than high school ball,” Decker said. “Because everyone knows exactly where they’re supposed to be doing and the speed of the game is really, really fast.”
This year for Murphy, Decker had to lead a team with 14 new players on its 18 player roster. Many were multi-sport athletes playing soccer for the first time. Brownlee nicknamed Decker “The General,” which was what some of her new teammates wanted.
During the Lady Bulldogs’ first scrimmage against Franklin, they wanted Decker to tell them where to be for the entire 80 minutes. Some of them wondered if you could foul out in soccer like you could in basketball.
With the lack of experience, Decker had to switch positions, too, going from her usual defensive midfielder spot to more of an attacking midfielder, since Murphy needed someone with skill that could transition to pushing the ball upfield.
Even with so many new players, the Lady Bulldogs finished 7-4-1 overall, tying for second place in the Smoky Mountain Conference before failing to Swain in a playoff tiebreaker to just miss out on playing in the postseason.
“It was a very weird season,” Brownlee said. “We had a lot that we had to have happen. We wouldn’t have had any of that happen without someone like Chloe.”
While Brownlee said Decker could’ve played soccer in college, she decided to focus on academics and will attend Duke University in the fall. She’s one of 12 Benjamin N. Duke memorial scholarship winners, which awards a full scholarship to incoming freshmen from North Carolina and South Carolina. She’s interested in studying public policy or going on the pre-law track, though Brownlee thinks that no matter what she does, she’ll be successful.
“I think she’s going to do a lot,” Brownlee said. “She’s going to go a long ways because you can’t be her and not be successful. You just have to be around her. She amazes me.”