When Iowa goalkeeper Emily Moran sent her goal kick astray against Northwestern on Friday, it fell to the one player who was sure to make her pay. Freshman forward Kate Allen dribbled the ball 20 yards unmarked toward goal and coolly placed it into the far corner
“Thankfully no one was on me, so I just brought it down with my chest and thought, ‘Why not just go for it?'” Allen said after the game.
Allen gave the Wildcats a two-goal lead, and they went on to win the game 3-0.
“She just has a nose for the goal, plain and simple,” senior midfielder Jennifer Baumann said.
That goal was Allen’s team-leading sixth goal of the season, which puts her ninth in the Big Ten for goals scored. It was a long-awaited tally for Allen, who had suffered a dry spell in front of the net.
After scoring five goals in her first 10 games for NU, Allen went goal-less in the next five.
“She had a huge start, and I knew it would get hard for her because teams were going to key in on her,” coach Stephanie Foster said. “What makes her a good forward is that she feels responsible for winning and scoring, and that wasn’t happening for a stretch of our Big Ten season.”
Allen got her NU career off to a dream start against DePaul. After scoring her first collegiate goal in the 76th minute, Allen added her second in overtime to seal the win for the Cats. That week, she was named the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Week and Offensive Player of the Week.
The start was beyond what the Ohio native expected.
“I didn’t come in saying, ‘I want to play,'” Allen said. “It was just, I’m going to work hard each day, make myself better, then hopefully get on the field.”
With the season almost over, Allen’s contribution to the team has been pivotal. Three of Allen’s goals have been game winners – against DePaul, then-No. 3 UCLA and Eastern Michigan. All six games she has scored in have resulted in wins for the Cats.
“You never know how freshmen are going to do,” Foster said. “We certainly had high expectations for her, for her career here, and I think it’s been going pretty similar to how I thought it would go.”
Allen already holds the school record for the quickest response to an opponent’s goal. In the Big Ten opener at Indiana, she netted the Cats’ equalizer 16 seconds after Indiana scored. Her fiercely struck shot – Indiana’s goalkeeper got her hand on it but couldn’t push it out – was characteristic of the sharp shooter. Senior goalkeeper Carolyn Edwards described Allen’s shots as “unbelievable.”
With three games left, Allen will have the chance to add another school record to her name: the most game-winning goals scored by a freshman. Her three game-winners leave her one shy of Katie Hertz’s record set in 1998.
“She’s given herself a great base to start off as a freshman to just build from there,” Baumann said. “She’s going to be an asset to the program over the next couple of years.”
