Unassuming Callie Hem's Lethal May Fueling Duke Run

Duke attacker Callie Hem has a job lined up at Fidelity Investments in Boston — but she’d like to make a pitstop in a Massachusetts locale about 45 minutes from Beantown on Memorial Day weekend before the real world begins.

Foxborough is the host site for the final four, with Gillette Stadium (home of the New England Patriots) serving as the host venue. Hem has certainly done her part to move Duke one step closer to playing on championship weekend for the first time in a decade. She scored 15 goals combined in Duke’s first- and second-round NCAA tournament games, dropping eight goals against James Madison before scoring seven times to beat No. 5 Virginia.

“I don't know if I necessarily had the hot hand,” Hem said. “It was more just our offense clicked, and when we click, we play and shoot better.”

It’s not the greatest soundbite, but it tracks for Hem, whose humility and quiet-by-default personality quickly stood out to the Duke coaching staff when she arrived in Durham from Harvard as a graduate transfer.

“She’s quiet, unassuming and extremely humble,” Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel said. “She doesn’t get too excited or down about anything. [Assistant coach] Brooke Bailey and I looked at each other and said, ‘We’re not going to change who she is. We’re just going to play to her strength,’ and she’s been a very consistent player for us this season.”

Indeed, Hem’s 15-goal effort wasn’t an anomaly but par for the course for a player who has netted at least a hat trick in 13 of Duke’s 19 games this year.

But Hem’s journey through late high school and collegiate lacrosse hasn’t been a straight line. She tore her ACL during her senior year in high school, though that was 2020, and the season was canceled anyway due to the pandemic. The Needham, Mass., native chose Harvard partly because it was closer to her home. But she tore her ACL during her freshman season, which was also canceled because of the pandemic.

“It was a big break between the time we were actually on the field again,“ Hem said. “It gave me a ton of appreciation.”

In 2022, the appreciation was on full display. The rust? Not so much. Hem led the Crimson with 44 points and 34 goals, earning first-team all-Ivy League status. She surpassed her goal totals in her final two seasons in Cambridge, tallying 59 goals as a junior and 67 as a senior.

During her senior year, Hem stayed in touch with two former teammates, Maggie McCarthy and Grace Hulslander, who were taking their graduate years at Duke. Their experiences meant something to her, as did the Duke one-year business Master’s program. (A former Ivy League foe from Penn, Gabby Rosenzweig, also took advantage of the program.)

“It was a natural path for me,” Hem said. “Grace and Maggie were two people I looked up to, and they had nothing but great things to say about Duke.”

Of course, the feeling between coaches and potential transfers needs to be mutual, and McCarthy and Hulslander also had nothing but great things to say about Hem.

“Once we learned more about her and listened to Grace talk about the impact that she'd had at Harvard, it heightened our interest in her,” Kimel said.

It didn’t hurt that Hem had scored four goals for Harvard in the Crimson’s 15-13 loss to Duke during the 2024 season. Hem has taken on a different role with the Blue Devils this year, evolving her game.

“At Harvard, Callie feels like she was more of a dodger,” Kimel said. “This year for us, her bread-and-butter has been as an inside player and finisher.”

That role changed, but Kimel wouldn’t force a vocal leadership role on the quiet graduate student. Hem was vocal on the field and showed up and role-modeled for younger players in other ways.

“She's a lead-by-example kind of kid,” Kimel said. “Student-athletes at Duke are hard-charging kids who put a lot of pressure on themselves, so to see someone be so calm and collected is a great example to younger kids. Also, you don’t have to be more than who you are here — who you are is completely enough.”

Or more than enough, perhaps, in Hem’s case. Kimel credits Hem for helping to bring along redshirt-sophomore attacker Eva Pronti, who tallied 13 assists last year and now leads the Blue Devils with 48 helpers.

“Eva has always been a great feeder,” Kimel said. “She was on the field some last year, but now she’s on the field full-time. Eva has great vision, and she developed a connection with Callie. They’ve been productive, and it flowed together.”

With Hem, it’s not simply that she can score — she can shoot with accuracy. She’s sixth nationally in shooting percentage (.607). She was 8-for-9 against James Madison and 7-for-9 against Virginia.

“She’s certainly put a lot of points on the board this year, and knowing she’s efficient gives our players confidence to give her the ball,” Kimel said. “You know that more often than not, the ball is going to end up in the back of the net.”

Hem had three first-half goals against Virginia, helping the Blue Devils build an 8-3 lead and forcing the Cavs to make a goalie change, bringing in Abby Jansen. Jansen came in hot, making three stops, including a Hem shot. Virginia closed the gap to 8-5 by halftime.

It began to feel like deja vu from the Blue Devils’ loss to the Cavs in the regular season — a game they led 6-0, but fueled in part by a UVA goalie switch that shifted momentum, lost 16-11. Kimel wasn’t about to see that happen again, nor was her seasoned attacker.

“One of the big parts of our scout going to Virginia was that we needed to make an adjustment quicker if they went to their backup,” Kimel said. “I turned to Callie at halftime, and I’m like, ‘[Jansen] is turning and going high because that’s where you’re coming from.’ She sat straight up in the locker room and looked at me.”

And? Hem missed one more shot (wide in the third quarter) but added four more goals to her register, pushing Duke to a 17-9 win and its first quarterfinal appearance since 2021.

“There's a difference between coaching an 18-year-old,” Kimel said. “They have the ability to make the adjustment more quickly and not take it personally. She scored 1-2-3 goals to start the third quarter. It’s a testament to her focus, age, experience and the connections she’s developed on the team.”

Hem and Duke must again adjust quickly for the Blue Devils’ matchup with Florida. Whereas Virginia and James Madison leaned more heavily on zone defenses, the Gators play a 1-v-1 defense.

“We have to stick our shots and do the same thing with the draw,” Kimel said. “Callie has been an integral part of our offense and scoring all season, but now we’ve got to flip the mindset back to playing a team that plays a different style of defense than James Madison and Virginia.”

Mindset was a key factor in Duke’s early NCAA tournament performances. A loss to Clemson in the ACC quarterfinals on April 23 offered a gut check.

“After the UVA game, I told the players that losing in the ACC tournament was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to us,” Kimel said. “We did not play well. We came home the next day and watched the entire game together. Everybody took accountability for their performances. We talked about regret. It’s about what we can do to change the outcome. We’ve practiced extremely well and been focused. For the last week, we’ve been done with school. For the average Duke student, not having to focus on exams while trying to prepare for the NCAA tournament is special, and they revel in it.”

Hem may not get too high or low, but she, too, is reveling in what will likely be the final week(s) — and hopefully the plural — of her lacrosse career.

“We’ve had two weeks of practice where we worked a lot on ourselves and how we can play at a level where we can win hard games,” Hem said. “You could feel the energy [last weekend].  We want to prove that we're almost a different team than we were a few weeks ago.”