Scott McClurg/Journal-World PhotoKansas University soccer sensation Caroline Smith can’t explain her ability to score so many goals.
She just does.
“I don’t know,” Smith said. “Ever since I was little I always liked to score goals. I just got better and better at it as I got older, and most people will tell you that you’re either a goal scorer or you’re not.”
Smith is definitely the former.
Need proof?
Scott McClurg/Journal-World File PhotoHow about 12 goals in 15 games, a single-season school record? And those were her freshman statistics.
Her numbers are even better now.
Smith already has scored 18 goals this year. That alone would tie Smith with former Jayhawk Natalie Hoogveld for most goals in a career, but add Smith’s 12 tallies from last season and Smith has smashed that school record, too.
“I don’t know how she does it,” said Hoogveld, anything but sad that someone like Smith swapped places with her in the KU record book. “Caroline can just find the back of the net like a magnet.”
Smith, who also holds KU’s career points total record with 66, earned All-Big 12 Conference first-team honors this year by leading the league in both goals (18) and points (39).
Ultimately, Smith’s success starts with a rare combination of speed and strength, but steadily improves because of her work ethic.
Yet even KU coach Mark Francis can’t explain Smith’s extraordinary scoring ability.
“I don’t know, because if I knew I’d teach everybody else to do it and we’d have 10 goal scorers,” Francis said. “Players that score goals, nobody knows why they do it. If you did, you’d teach other players to do it. But it’s a special gift.”
A special gift indeed, but one that might stem from another Smith trait — toughness.
While Smith can’t put her finger on why she scores so easily, she knows her toughness developed from hockey. The 5-foot-2 soccer standout began on skates in Edina, Minn.
“I know I wouldn’t have wanted to suit up against her,” Francis said. “She probably would have taken me out.”
Smith’s older brother Tim says girls weren’t supposed to have contact with each other on the rink.
“They wouldn’t allow them to check each other, but I heard a few stories about her running into the wall and stuff,” Tim Smith said. “Heck, I’ve even heard stories where she would run into her own players at (soccer) practice, and knock them out.”
Smith confirmed her rugged tendencies on the ice.
“I was pretty quick and stuff, and sometimes I would get going and go out of control and run into a wall or something,” Smith said, laughing about her youth.
Simon Whitehead, Smith’s soccer coach at Edina High, confirmed her toughness on the soccer field.
“Back then she didn’t really have a great first touch, so her second touch would just be to tackle,” Whitehead said. “She was short and very fast and with that kind of stature, it was tough for others to take the ball away from her.”
Mainly, Whitehead said, because Smith, the 2001 Gatorade Player of the Year in Minnesota, was a fiery competitor.
“Some girls want to win, and some girls will do whatever it takes for their team to win,” he said. “If there was a minute left and her team was down two goals, Caroline would still be trying to score three.”
Francis, who took notice of Smith because of her play on her high school club team, couldn’t help but notice her toughness as well.
“You can’t knock her off the ball, and she scraps and fights for stuff,” said Francis, who said Smith was the “best player he’s ever coached.
“Some of the goals that she scores are a result of that.”
Fellow Jayhawk and Minnesotan Rachel Gilfillan, who hails from Cottage Grove, joked Smith’s strength was solidified by growing up in the gritty Northern U.S.
| Kansas University standout Caroline Smith was selected Wednesday as one of 15 semifinalists for the Missouri Athletic Club’s Hermann Award, the highest individual honor in women’s collegiate soccer.Smith, who is from Edina, Minn., has scored a school-record 18 goals and is the Jayhawks’ single-season record holder for points with 39.”This is a huge honor for Caroline,” KU soccer coach Mark Francis said. “To be one of the top 15 players in the nation is great, especially for as young as she is.” |
“I do think that we do grow them a little tougher up there,” Gilfillan said with a grin. “Almost every game this season people are trying to take her down, bang her up.
“But she’s so tough, just running through tacklers as if they were the ball. Some of that probably came from her hockey days.”
Smith wasn’t indestructible though last season, when she suffered the first significant injury of her career — damage to a medial collateral ligament in her right knee.
“I just prayed that it wasn’t my ACL,” Smith said.
The tear did not require surgery, but Smith — who at the time was leading the Big 12 in scoring — missed five games.
Smith returned for the Big 12 Tournament with a bulky brace and even managed a goal, but the time away from the game made her embrace the sport she started at the age of 3 even more.
“It definitely motivated me to work harder than ever,” she said. “Having to sit out those games really made me want to get back out there more than ever.”
Smith showed that in tri-weekly workouts last spring when she not only rehabbed her knee to 100 percent, but recorded personal bests in the 40 (5.1 seconds), vertical leap (26 inches) and a squat of 295 pounds, or nearly three times her body weight.
“She works out as hard as anyone I train with,” KU trainer Whitney Rodden said. “I’m not surprised that she’s come back even stronger. She has a goal and wants to reach it and does so by chasing it each and every time she’s in the gym.”
For Smith, challenges still lie ahead.
She must win back her National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) All-American jacket — which she earned because of her 33 goals and 11 assists during her senior year of high school — from her brother Tim, who won the jacket in their annual shootout.
“We always play at this park near our house in Edina,” Caroline Smith said. “We’ll line up about 20 yards from each other and try to get as many shots past each other as possible. Last time he won.”
Despite her collegiate success, Smith is humble enough to recognize her weaknesses.
“Yeah, I score a lot of goals, but sometimes I miss a lot of chances that people aren’t going to talk about,” said Smith, who last summer was invited to the Under-21 National Team camp. “I can do some things better, like moving without the ball and being more active all the time.”
First tough task first though, as Smith and the Jayhawks will be trying for their first-ever NCAA Tournament victory.
Kansas, 16-5-1 and ranked No. 16 in this week’s NSCAA poll, will meet Illinois State at 4 p.m. Friday in Columbia, Mo. KU is the No. 13 seed in the 64-team meet tourney, and with a win would meet the winner of the Missouri-Eastern Illinois contest at 1 p.m. Sunday.
“Friday is going to be our biggest challenge,” Smith said. “Every game left this season is going to be our biggest challenge, because there are no more second chances.”
We’ll maybe one. Tim and that jacket.
“That shouldn’t be that tough,” she said with a smile.
Scott McClurg/Journal-World PhotosKansas University track throws coach Doug Reynolds caught himself daydreaming three years ago while driving to Des Moines, Iowa, for the Drake Relays.
Reynolds, a Phoenix native and standout discus thrower and shot putter from the University of Arizona, predicted finding physically imposing female high-school shot, discus and javelin flingers in Iowa.
“It was my first year at Kansas, and I hadn’t spent much time recruiting in the Midwest after being at Boise State in the Northwest where we recruited Seattle, Portland — all these big metro cities,” Reynolds said. “I went out there with this idea of seeing these big, corn-fed Iowa girls — 6-foot behemoths.”
Instead, he found diminutive Abby Emsick, a 5-foot-6, 150-pounder from Council Bluffs.
“I remember this little girl was in line getting ready to throw the discus, and I said, ‘Who is this little girl with all these giants? She’s going to get killed,”’ Reynolds said.
“I watched her get in the ring and saw her draw the discus back, and I saw it fly, and I missed everything in between. It was just a blur. I said, ‘That’s her. That’s her. I’ve got to go get her.’ She just killed everybody in that meet.”
Reynolds out-recruited Iowa State and others for Emsick, a five-time Drake Relays discus champion (four high school titles, one college) who has made a major impact in her freshman season at KU.
Emsick, who placed second with a then-personal-best throw of 173 feet, 8 inches at the recent Big 12 Conference championships, threw a school-record 180-10 at last week’s regional meet in Lincoln, Neb., again good for second and qualifying her for this week’s NCAA championships in Sacramento, Calif.
She’s also qualified for the USA championships and the Olympic Trials — all just a year out of high school.
“(At Drake) I saw her compete with a competitive fire, a competitive edge the rest didn’t have,” Reynolds said. “You can train speed only so much as your athletic ability will allow.
Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo“You can only teach them so much competitively. They’ve got to have the mindset to win and compete and say, ‘I don’t care about the rest.’ That’s enough for me,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds simply loves the mind-set of Emsick, who is not satisfied despite beating the old KU discus record throw of 176-4 set by Marlea Woodman in 1998.
“I have high expectations of myself,” Emsick said. “As a freshman, I wanted to break the school record, and I wanted to make the NCAAs. I actually expected to throw 180 in the first couple of meets, but it didn’t happen. I was trying for it, and when you try for it, it doesn’t really come. You have to work for it gradually. I’m not going to stop at 180.”
She’s not seeking any specific distance when she competes at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the NCAA discus qualifying round at Sacramento, Calif.
“It’s not necessarily about a mark,” Emsick said. “My goal is to compete well.”
Not only at NCAAs, but at the upcoming USA Championships later this month in Palo Alto, Calif., and the 2004 Olympic Trials.
“She’s got that out of the way and can now focus on technique and training, everything that goes into a good throw,” Reynolds said. “It will make her season next year much more relaxed.”
Reynolds — who will compete at the USA championships in the men’s discus — is looking forward to helping Emsick, a former high-school basketball player, reach her athletic potential. One of the reasons she picked KU was Reynolds’ personal achievements.
“Iowa State and KU were pretty equal,” Emsick said. “It came down to both schools, and I had to just pick one. I like the coaching staff, and KU was building a strong track program.
“I knew the coaches were really pushing the program. He (Reynolds) is going through a lot of the same things I’m going through, and he’s been through a lot of things I will be going through. It’s great having him giving me advice.”
Other KU athletes at the NCAAs are Leo Bookman (200), Laura Lavoie (1,500), Mark Menefee (5,000), Jeremy Mims (800), Sondra Rauterkus (high jump), Benaud Shirley (triple jump) and the women’s 1,600-meter team of Robbie Harriford, Stacy Keller, Shameika McField and Kim Clark.
Assistant sports editor Gary Bedore can be reached at 832-7186.
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