“The only reason I hold those records is due to the incredible strength of the defense that played in front of me.”

– Anne Sherow

As an 8-year-old living in Dayton, Ohio, Anne Sherow thought soccer was “a dumb and strange sport” and she definitely did not want to be a goalkeeper. As a freshman goalkeeper at North Carolina in 1985, Sherow was not on the Tar Heels travel team and was not on scholarship.

It’s not a likely place-setter for the woman who would go on to become one of the best stoppers in NCAA women’s soccer history.

“My dad signed me up for a youth soccer program even though I had never even seen the sport on television or knew anything about it,” recalls Sherow. “But by the end of my first practice, I loved it.”

Sherow played both in the field and as a goalkeeper in high school, but soon realized she would have a better chance of playing in college if she specialized as a goalkeeper.

Since this was the 1980s, the idea of women competing in sports still was a new concept to many.

“The image of a female athlete has changed dramatically in our society,” says Sherow. “It was not as cool, or as accepted or valued that you were an athlete instead of a cheerleader when I was in high school.”

The NCAA first sponsored a women’s soccer championship in 1982, and North Carolina was the first national champion. Two more titles followed in 1983 and 1984. That prompted Sherow to send a videotape of one of her high school games to UNC head coach Anson Dorrance.

“Anson point-blank told me that he did not have any scholarship money at the time,” says Sherow. “I could have opted to go to a ‘safer’ choice where I could play immediately, but I would always wonder if I could have succeeded at UNC.”

Sherow was sitting in the stands (“I picked a lot of pine my first two years,” she said) when the Tar Heels were upset by George Mason, 2-0, in the 1985 championship game. “The party afterward (which, of course, was supposed to be a victory party) was extremely intense,” says Sherow. “Every single player vowed to never lose again.”

By the time Sherow finished her senior year, the Tar Heels were good to their word, winning three more national titles and going 55-0-5. For good measure, UNC tacked on six more crowns after that – a total of nine straight – and established the NCAA record of 103 games without a loss.

It was her junior year, 1987, that Sherow finally had the opportunity to become the starting goalkeeper, and it was a season to remember. She surrendered only one goal the entire season – a span of 24 games – and established the NCAA single-season record for goals-against average – an incredible 0.052 (one goal allowed in 1,712 minutes). The championship game was a 1-0 nailbiter against Massachusetts, played on the UMass campus on a bitter-cold day in November.

“I could barely feel my hands after the first half,” says Sherow.

In addition to the season mark, Sherow also holds the NCAA career goals-against average record of 0.143 (four goals in 2,525 minutes) and the record for consecutive shutout minutes (1,669:25).

“I do want to absolutely and unequivocally state that the only reason I hold those records is due to the incredible strength of the defense that played in front of me,” says Sherow. “During a good number of those games, our defense prevented me from actually physically even touching the ball. My parents called me the ‘Maytag Repairman” after one game they saw in person.”

Sherow was a journalism major at North Carolina and after graduation became the sports editor for a 5,000-circulation newspaper in Elkin, North Carolina. Today, Sherow lives in New Jersey and is a sales representative for Nike, specializing in soccer, and no doubt tries to inspire 8-year-olds to play the sport she loves.