Duquesne women’s soccer coach Al Alvine has noticed junior goalkeeper Maddy Neundorfer’s innate ability to stand out among her teammates over the past three years.
Alvine just hasn’t always heard her doing so.
“She’s kind of a quiet kid,” Alvine said. “We’ve got a team full of big personalities, and really outgoing kids, and she’s kind of an introverted kid.”
A 2020 Gateway graduate, Neundorfer has worked to come out of her shell since first stepping onto the Bluff.
“You hear her voice a lot more than when she first got here,” Alvine said. “She is an intense kid, an introverted kid. She’s super hardworking. She’s somebody who takes the game very seriously, takes being successful very seriously.”
Now in her second season as Duquesne’s full-time starter, there’s no doubt the rest of the Atlantic 10 Conference is taking her seriously as well.
Neundorfer has emerged to become one of the A-10’s top goalkeepers. Her five shutouts are second best in the conference, and she sits firmly among the top 10 in every statistical category.
“She’s somebody that’s probably the most respected kid on the team because when she does talk it’s not just cheerleading from the back,” Alvine said. “It’s contextual information that she’s giving to the players, and she’s right all the time.
“She’s always been a phenomenal shot-stopper,” he added. “She’s a phenomenal distributor with her feet and her hands, but that was the piece that we’d always talked about, the area that we want her to make the most improvement.”
After appearing in one game as a freshman, Neundorfer started all 16 games for Duquesne as a sophomore. Her 96 saves and six saves per game were good for second best in the conference a season ago, while her .814 save percentage was fourth best in the A-10.
Neundorfer has allowed just 15 goals through 13 games this season and made 59 saves with a .797 save percentage. Her 4.54 saves-per-game average is currently fourth best in the A-10.
“It’s going awesome so far,” Neundorfer said. “I think we are all happy with how it’s going so far, but we realize that there’s more work that needs to be done.”
For Neundorfer, the happiest part of her season has come during conference play.
Duquesne (5-5-3, 3-0-3) is in fourth place in the Atlantic 10 and has lost just once in its past eight matches. The Dukes haven’t conceded more than two goals in a game during that span.
Neundorfer has recorded three of her five shutouts in conference play.
“I kind of have that expectation for myself,” she said. “I always want to perform at my best and get shutouts, and I guess it wasn’t necessarily expected but I think me and the entire team, we have kind of worked toward that goal of defending and being a force, tough in the back line.”
For Neundorfer, the strong play of Duquesne’s defenders is a byproduct of her increased confidence in communicating with her teammates on the pitch.
“I think we all mesh together and work really well together,” she said. “We are always bouncing ideas off each other.”
Some of those ideas have come from her counterparts across the pitch as well.
Alvine credited Neundorfer’s ability to study the Dukes’ opposing goalkeepers and give recommendations on how her teammates can attack them as crucial to their ability to score goals.
“As a goalie, you can see the entire field,” Neundorfer said. “From a forward’s perspective, they can only see kind of what’s in front of them. So I give little tips and tricks here and there, what would be easy for a goalie, what would be more difficult. Things like that, I think, that’s really critical and important to be able to relay on to whoever is up top.”
While Neundorfer’s reconnaissance has been important, so, too, has the goalkeeper’s ability to come up big in the clutch.
Neundorfer made saves on penalty kicks in conference games against Massachusetts and Davidson. The Dukes earned 1-1 ties in each match.
“There are games where she has been our best player and we’ve gotten shut out and we’ve won games and tied games because of her,” Alvine said. “There are times where it’s more of a team effort, it’s always a team effort to some degree, but she’s always there when we need her.”
With five conference games left on Duquesne’s schedule — including matchups with first-place Saint Louis and third-place LaSalle — Neundorfer will need to be at her best the rest of the season.
And that’s exactly her plan.
“Right now, we just want to take care of the rest of these games,” Neundorfer said. “The big goal right now is A-10 playoffs. I want to be able to set ourselves up for a position to host a playoff game and eventually go on and win the A-10 playoffs.
“I think that’s going to take a lot of communication, hard work, and I think, at this point, we just have to have fun. I think we just have to have fun and trust each other.”
John is a copy editor and page designer at the Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at jsanta@unionprogress.com.