Dothan soccer player Katie Beth Wakefield accomplished much during her career

“I know how it happened, but I don’t know how it went in the goal,” Wakefield said.

It came on March 13 during a 2-1 loss to Spanish Fort. Dothan High was trailing 1-0 at the time when Wakefield took a pass off her jersey around midfield, let it fall to the ground and then struck the ball with a mighty kick.

“It was a throw-in and Caroline Ezell threw it to my chest and I trapped it,” Wakefield remembered. “This girl was coming straight at me, so I was thinking, ‘I’ll just kick it to the goal and the forwards will crash it, whatever.’

“Then the next thing you see the goalie like running backwards about to fall over. It went over her head. I was like, ‘What in the world? I don’t know how that just happened.’ It was like a miracle.”

A day later, the Dothan Wolves girls soccer team would play its last game due to spring sports being shut down because of COVID-19. Wakefield, along with 10 other seniors, was left wondering what might have been.

“It didn’t really hit me for a while until different friends from different schools were like, ‘OK, we’re done. It’s over with,’” Wakefield said. “It is a big deal, but it’s not as big of a deal for me because I’m not going to college to play. I have friends that were relying on this past season to try and get recruited and stuff.”

Wakefield, who will attend Auburn University this fall and likely play intramural soccer, will leave behind an envious high school career.

She got her first experience on the varsity level as a seventh grader at the former Northview High School as the Cougars were preparing for the playoffs in what would be a run to the Final Four.

Current Dothan coach Haley Williams, who led her alma mater of Northview for five years before Northview and Dothan consolidated before this past school year, saw something special in Wakefield early on.

“I think it was in her seventh grade year (on the JV team) she scored a goal from midfield against Enterprise,” Williams said. “As a seventh grader to have a presence of mind to shoot from midfield, I was like, ‘She could only help us.’ I think it’s good to take a full roster into playoffs and she was probably the best player on the JV squad.

“I think in one of the playoff games she scored, but they called her offsides, which I would still probably argue to this day. You could just see from the beginning she was only going to get better.”

Getting playing time on the varsity as a seventh grader opened the eyes of Wakefield.

“I felt like a baby compared to everybody and I was at least a foot shorter, and probably 35 to 50 pounds lighter to every single one of them,” Wakefield said. “That’s what coach Haley was real nervous about. She thought I was going to snap in half if somebody ran over me.”

Wakefield didn’t shy away from the challenge and it was the start of something special on the varsity level.

As an eighth grader, Wakefield scored four goals while playing as a midfielder on defense and had an astounding 103 takeaways.

“My biggest mindset in soccer, especially in defense, is I’m trying not to let anybody get past me,” Wakefield said. “In playing defensive midfielder, I was the person they shouldn’t get through. And if they got through, then the defensive line was supposed to get them.

“But I felt like my goal was to stop them. That way, the defensive line didn’t have to work as hard. That was my main job.”

She scored 17 goals in both of her freshman and sophomore years while still serving as more of a defender.

“In ninth grade she’s playing the same position and scores 17 goals from a defensive position,” Williams said. “We started letting her take free quicks. We thought, ‘She’s got a leg on her, let’s let her start taking some free kicks.’

“She scored some from free kicks, and on corner kicks we let her go up there because she wasn’t one who was afraid to barrel through somebody and get her head, foot, body part — something on the ball.

“She’s somebody that was not afraid to make something happen. Even as a defensive mid, she’s not afraid to go after a 50-50 ball because she has confidence in her abilities that she’s going to throw everything she can at them.”

As a junior, Wakefield moved to a forward and became the top scorer on the team with 28 goals. She credits her teammates for much of her success.

“I do think that a major thing was with Faith Hayes being on left wing,” Wakefield said. “She wasn’t super selfish about wanting to score, whatever. We really tried to get a bunch of different people to score, but our main thing was it doesn’t matter who scores, it matters that we score.

“She (Hayes) gave me a ton of opportunities, and Frances Fabbrini did too — just the wings in general. Everybody just wanted to get it in the goal, and it didn’t matter who got it in. I was just up top crashing the goalie. That’s another thing I really took advantage of.”

Wakefield ranks as the second all-time leading scorer in Northview girls soccer history with her 66 goals, just behind Alannah Vincent, who scored 68 from 2004-2009.

She scored five goals in a game twice for Northview, tying a record held by Williams, who was a star player for the Cougars from 2004-2008.

Her six goals in eight games in this year’s shortened-season with the Dothan High will make her the present goals leader for the Wolves, though that record will likely vanish next spring when a full season is played. She also had 23 takeaways in splitting time between forward and midfield as Dothan went 5-3.

“I was thinking this is going to be terrible,” Wakefield said of the two teams merging. “We’re going to not get along very well. We’ve been rivals for a long time. It’s not going to work out that great.”

But Wakefield is now thankful for the opportunity to be part of the first Wolves’ girls soccer team.

“It was super challenging, but it also pushed me out of my comfort zone,” Wakefield said. “I met a ton of new people and we also had to learn how each other played, and that’s really hard.

“As Northview girls we had been playing together for a long time, so it was really hard to adjust, but I do think it was really good for all of us.”

Now Wakefield is ready for her next chapter in life, even if playing soccer will be on a less-intense level now in the Auburn intramural leagues.

“I think it will be a really good opportunity to stay active and to also meet a bunch of other people — some I’ve probably played against throughout Alabama,” Wakefield said.

Williams figures Wakefield will still put it all on the line no matter the competition.

“God bless anyone she has to play against,” Williams said.