CARIBOU, Maine — Fearlessness, aggressiveness and athleticism.
Those three qualities are quintessential for anyone looking to be a soccer goalie and Caribou’s Brittany Doak possess all three of those attributes.
“Aggressiveness is certainly one of Brittany’s strengths,” Caribou coach Todd Albert said. “She also does a great job reading angles to come off her lines.”
Caribou had a Cinderella season this fall, finishing 9-4-1 in the regular season. It was in the playoffs, though, where the Vikings started to shine. No. 5 Caribou beat Gardiner 6-5 in the quarterfinals and upset Presque Isle 2-1 in the semifinals before falling 6-1 to Winslow in the Eastern Class B championship.
The Vikings scored 50 goals, with Doak allowing 26 for the year.
“The biggest thing with Brittany is that she will keep her team in every game,” Presque Isle coach Ralph Michaud said. “It’s going to take a perfect shot or a great goal to score on her. She’s fearless and is excellent at cutting down angles, plus, she has great hands.”
Doak got her start with soccer at the tender age of 4 when she attended a Dutch Soccer Academy conducted by Robbie Krul.
“My mom encouraged me to go, so I gave it a try and I loved it,” Doak said. “I played the field more back when I was little, so it was a little different for me.”
Doak made the transition to goalie out of necessity during her freshman year at Caribou High School. At first she was reluctant to step into the net, but she quickly found her place on the soccer pitch as the last line of defense for the Vikings.
“It’s not something I wanted to do starting out, but coach needed someone to fill that position, so I gave it a try,” Doak said.
A striker throughout her middle school career, making the switch to goalie was difficult at first.
“It took a bit to get the hand-eye coordination thing down,” she said. “I had always been taught, ‘don’t use your hands,’ but then I had to, to be a goalie so it was a little weird.”
Albert said in Doak’s freshman year, the goalie was thrown into the fire quickly as the Vikings struggled through a 2-11-1 season.
“I didn’t think coming in that she was going to be our starting goalie as a freshman, but she played better than who we had, so she earned that job,” Albert said. “She saw quite a few shots that year, which I think helped develop her game.”
“It was a little nerve-wracking as a freshman coming into the starting role,” she said. “The goalie position just stuck with me, I think, because I am a really aggressive player. It really fit my personality.”
And while that aggressiveness helped stop many an opponent’s drive, both Doak and coach Albert acknowledge that sometimes being too bold can be detrimental.
During breakaways, Doak said she tries to determine what move her opponent is going to make before they make it, much like a chess game.
“A lot of goalies won’t come out of the net,” she said. “They wait for the ball to come to them, and that can cost them. It’s my job to stop the ball, so I go out and get it. Plus, I think it messes players up a lot to see a goalie coming out at them.”
By coming out of net, contact with opposing players, and sometimes with her own teammates, is an unavoidable fact of life and Doak has the bruises to prove it. By the end of the season, she was peppered with welts.
“I see a lot of cleats and have been kicked quite often,” Doak said.
As a younger athlete, Doak gravitated toward basketball. However, by the time she reached high school, soccer took over as her favorite sport.
“I think it was because I seemed to excel more in soccer than the other sports, so it became more enjoyable,” she said.
Reaching the Eastern Class B championship was a dream come true for Doak and the rest of the Viking squad.
“We came such a long way this year from where we were my freshman and sophomore years,” Doak said. “Plus, we were such a young team, having lost seven seniors from the previous year. We were definitely underdogs this year, so it felt so good to get that far.”
Facing penalty kicks in the Vikings’ semifinal game against Presque Isle marked the first time in Doak’s four-year career that she had a game come down to penalty kicks.
“It was definitely nerve-wracking,” she said. “I tried to watch their [Presque Isle kickers’] hips to see which way they were going to open up for the shot. But you only have a split-second to choose.”
“To be a goalie, it’s a hard position to fill, because no matter what anyone tells you, you feel you let your team down when someone scores,” Doak said.
Doak’s favorite moment in sports came during one of the Dutch Soccer Academy’s tours to Europe as a sophomore. She participated in soccer matches in several different European countries, but it was a victory in Germany that stands out in her mind.
“Nobody expected us to get a win because soccer is so much more advanced over there than it is here,” she said. “The biggest shock was seeing 5-year-old kids keeping up with our boys and actually showing them moves.”
“Her best game that I remember was in her sophomore year at Fort Kent,” Albert said. “We won that game 8-1, but it was a lot closer than the score indicated. She had some unbelievable saves in that game.”
A basketball and softball player for the Vikings as well, soccer is the sport Doak hopes to play when she goes off to college next year.
“I don’t know why, but soccer just stands out for me,” she said. “It’s different than all the other sports. You have 80 minutes of hard play and anything can happen. I love it.”
