Maybe one day, one of the Kansas soccer team’s goalkeepers will get the chance to play on a World Cup field. Sophie Dawe, after all, was called up to a training camp for the United States under-20 women’s national team last summer.
But in the meantime, Dawe and her teammate Clara Roche got about as physically close as one can get to doing so without actually being part of a team.
As part of a package offered by On Location, the hospitality provider for this summer’s men’s World Cup, about 50 fans had the chance to attempt penalty kicks on the field at Arrowhead Stadium following the conclusion of the Argentina-Switzerland match on July 11.
Lining up opposite them in goal were Dawe and Roche.
“It was amazing, at least for me,” Roche, a sophomore from Homer Glen, Illinois, told the Journal-World. “That’s a dream for most people, is getting to go to a World Cup game, especially against Argentina.”
It was a “no-brainer,” Dawe said, for the pair of Jayhawks to accept the opportunity with On Location when it found its way to them via the KU communications department and head coach Nate Lie.
“We jumped on that, yeah,” Roche added.
They knew they would get the chance to attend the game before heading down to the field for the postgame penalty-kick exercise. They did not know where or in what level of luxury: “I kind of thought we were going to be in the hall watching it on a TV or something,” Dawe said.
“All of a sudden we’re walking in this hallway, and it’s all quiet,” Roche said. “He opens up the door, and we see straight through the room — it’s the field. We’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re in a suite.'”
Dawe, who spent much of the summer in Kansas City training with the KC Current, was impressed by the atmosphere the city mustered for the event, with “all the different fans interacting, all the stuff that you don’t see on TV, and everything just looks so much bigger. Even trying to take pictures, you can’t describe it.”
“It was awesome,” she added. “It was lit up. Any people that even weren’t soccer fans before, they were super into the game and everyone was really bought into making it a very welcoming area.”
It was a late night for the KU keepers. The quarterfinal match kicked off at 8 p.m. It went to extra time before Argentina emerged with a 3-1 victory on late-stage goals from Julián Alvarez and Lautaro Martinez. Dawe and Roche spent an hour in a hospitality area meeting people and socializing while they waited for the field to clear. Roche enjoyed hearing stories from the fans, some of whom had been to as many as 20 matches.
“They had, like, some friendly competition amongst themselves too,” she said. “It was a bunch of bantering on the way down to the stadium.”
The goalkeepers were impressed by the World Cup field surface, which they admitted to having to touch to make sure it was real. (“It just felt like carpet, but, like, soft,” Dawe said.) The penalty-kick portion came around 1 a.m. and lasted 20 minutes: “We were in separate goals,” Dawe said, “and so they split them up and would take one shot on me, one shot on Clara, they would go to the benches and see those.”
As for how they fared against KU’s shot-stoppers …
“I don’t want to trash anyone,” said Dawe, who has pitched 14 shutouts the last two seasons. “They weren’t wearing cleats, to be fair. I don’t think we had to dive too much.”
Added Roche: “I had to let a few go in.”
Their degree of difficulty will increase exponentially in just a few short days, with a home exhibition against Iowa set for Saturday at 1 p.m. Roche said the Jayhawks are “hungry” and “ready as always.”
“Bringing a lot of good energy, I would say,” Dawe said. “I think our team’s gotten pretty close. It’s felt like we’ve been together for longer than we have, at least a few months, it feels like. I feel like we have a lot of good energy going into it.”
Kansas goalkeeper Clara Roche kicks the ball during practice in this undated photo in Lawrence.
Kansa goalkeeper Sophie Dawe yells to her teammates before the Jayhawks take on California Baptist in the NCAA tournament on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence.
Kansas Athletics
Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World