Brooke Stroh ‘24, a Northwestern lacrosse commit for the class of 2028, recently left the girls junior varsity field hockey team to join the girls varsity soccer team, having never played soccer before. Stroh was asked to join the team to make up for the shortage of goalies due to injuries and unexpected departures.
Stroh’s involvement with the team started one Monday morning during Community Time when she was approached unexpectedly by Head Girls Varsity Lacrosse Coach Angela McMahon. Stroh said, “I thought I was in trouble, to be honest, but then she said she had a random question for me and asked her to be the Girls’ Varsity Soccer goalie.”
Just like that, Stroh dove head first (literally and figuratively) into a new co-curricular activity. The team’s starting goalkeeper, Ellie Schiller ‘25, got injured, and goalies from previous seasons left the team, which led to a search for a replacement. Stroh’s lacrosse coach volunteered her due to her athleticism. Though Stroh had never played competitive soccer, she had some experience being a goalkeeper. In fact, just a few weeks before her official soccer game, Stroh had jokingly told a friend, “I feel like it would be so much fun to be a soccer goalie.” That phrase turned into a reality.
Although Stroh has enjoyed her experience on the team, she has faced many challenges in learning the new sport. Stroh said, “First of all, I am so used to being a field player where you have a lot of things to do, and a lot is going on, but as a goalie, you have one job: don’t let the ball go in the goal. So, it is harder to recover from getting scored on because, yes, you made a mistake, but now the other team has a goal.”
Stroh is now a tri-varsity athlete with the addition of soccer, playing on both Girls’ Varsity Basketball and Girls’ Varsity Lacrosse teams during the winter and spring seasons respectively. Contrasting her extensive experience with basketball and lacrosse, she shared that her lack of experience with soccer impacted her self-confidence. Stroh said, “In basketball and lacrosse, I have a lot more confidence, and I think that, at least in lacrosse, I feel more confident being a leader.”
According to Stroh, she has improved in many ways over her short time as a soccer goalie. “I wouldn’t say I have it down, but I have been getting better at diving and tipping the ball over the goal because, originally, I thought you had to catch every ball,” she said.
In an interview with Schiller, Stroh’s teammate and co-goalie, she commented on her many injuries and commended Stroh for stepping in, saying, “It has been a year with my chronically unstable ankle, and I was out with a stress fracture, which was super frustrating since we do not have a backup goalie on the team, so luckily we had Brooke step in.”
Having played soccer since she was four years old, Schiller has extensive experience in the sport and has helped integrate Stroh into the team in many ways. She said, “I have played goalie my entire life, and so I have grown up around it, and it takes a long time to get a hold of that mentality and to be in a game and let in a goal and get back up on your feet and keep going.” The high-stress situations experienced by a goalie differentiate their role from the other positions on the field. Although Schiller has learned to manage this pressure, she was worried about how it might affect someone new to the game like Stroh. However, Schiller said, “[Stroh] has the most impressive emotional intelligence I have ever seen out of an athlete, so she has been very good about it the past few weeks…it is a hard thing to do.”
According to Schiller, Stroh has improved in many ways. She said, “Brooke has had a lot of impressive saves and has gotten into her groove and has figured out how it works, especially [in terms of] diving.” Opposed to hosting another tryout or choosing someone else, Schiller believes Stroh was chosen “above all because of her athleticism and who she is as a person.”
Having left her JV field hockey team behind, Stroh has overcome challenges, learned new skills as a soccer goalkeeper, and developed new friendships. “Getting to go to practice every day and being just a little bit better has been really fun for me,” she said.