Since the turn of the millennium, the women’s soccer team has played 261 games. It has scored three or more goals in 44 — or 16.9 percent — of those games. Before last Monday, only four of those games featured a player who managed to generate all three goals on her own. But against Marist College, Carly Gould ’17 made it five.
Gould shredded the defense in Bruno’s 4-0 thrashing of the Red Foxes Monday, netting all three of her tallies in the first half. She nodded in a corner in the 10th minute to open the scoring, connected with another header just two minutes later off a Sydney Calas ’17 cross and completed her hat trick half an hour later when Celia Story ’19 found her open in the box again.
Coming into the season, only two players in the last 15 years — Kathryn Moos ’07 and Chloe Cross ’15 — had ever netted three goals in a game. Moos bookended her career with hat tricks, accomplishing the feat as a first-year and a senior, while Cross did it once as a rookie.
This year, lightning struck twice, as Erin Katz ’16 compiled a hat trick of her own just five games before Gould notched hers.
For her accuracy in the air, her composure in the box and her nose for goal, Gould has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week.
Herald: Had you scored a hat trick before last Monday?
Gould: No, it was my first one. It felt really good. It was a fun game.
On the first goal, you and two teammates all rushed to the near post on a corner, which created some chaos for the goalie and the defenders. Did you work on that in practice?
In our corner kick offense, that’s exactly what we do every time. It’s usually the same three players going for the ball, but we don’t always go near post. As the runners, we try to know where the person who is taking the corner likes to place the ball. There are multiple people on our team who take corner kicks, so it’s our job to know where each of their balls usually go and whether it curves, if it’s driven or it floats, so that’s just something we do a lot in practice.
After you scored the first two goals, did you feel like the third was going to come?
I wasn’t exactly thinking about getting the hat trick. In soccer, the opportunities just kind of come to you and you don’t exactly know when you’re going to get a chance to score another.
After the tough loss to Princeton, do you think the Marist win will give the team some confidence and momentum heading into the home stretch of the season?
We were definitely looking to score a lot of goals against Marist. We had a streak of multiple games where we hadn’t scored a goal, so we wanted to put a lot of them in the back of the net.
You usually sit back a little and play a more defensive role in the midfield. Were you looking to get up-field and join in on the attack against Marist?
I was definitely looking to generate more goal-scoring opportunities. I had a little bit less defensive responsibility against Marist than, say, against a team like Princeton, which helped too. Our whole team was really set on putting multiple goals in the net. Everyone was making the extra effort to get into the box, and all three of my goals were on crosses, so a lot of it just had to do with my teammates putting really good balls into the box for me.
Do you have a favorite drill that the team does in practice?
Shoot and play goalkeeper. There’s two teams, and your team feeds the ball to you. You shoot it and then get in net and the other team shoots on you. It’s just fun to switch roles.
Do you have a go-to song that gets you pumped up before games?
I don’t. Usually, we all listen to a playlist together in the locker room.
If you could play any sport other than soccer, what would it be and why?
It would be either basketball or football. I played basketball in high school, and I was also the kicker for my school’s football team, so I’d love to do that again. It was really fun.
— This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
