USC women’s soccer has pretty much had a dream season so far in 2024.
The Trojans won the Big Ten regular season championship in the team’s first ever season in the conference, clinching their first ever outright conference championship. Plus, they’re ranked as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history, even with the Trojans winning two national championships in the past.
This team is extremely experienced, as 11 of the 12 players who’ve logged 1,000-plus minutes this season are upperclassmen.
Included in that group are some standout transfers who’ve brought over their past accomplishments and pedigree to the team and have become leaders in their new squad.
One of them is senior Maile Hayes, who transferred after three seasons at Texas A&M, where she earned All-SEC First Team and SEC All-Freshman league honors. After spending her high school and college career in Texas, Hayes was looking for a new challenge in a new environment.
She finished her bachelor’s degree in three years and wanted to move somewhere to earn her master’s degree while continuing her soccer career and further her professional aspirations. Plus, being so close to the beach doesn’t hurt either. Hayes visits the sand and sea at least once or twice a week.
“It was just perfect timing and it all worked out,” Hayes said. “Last year, I wasn’t happy with the environment and I felt like I wasn’t getting everything I needed. I really wanted people who care about me as a player and person, which the coaches here truly do.”
One of the coaches who played a big role in Hayes transferring is assistant coach Ahmad Brown, who served in the same role at Texas A&M before making the move out west in 2023, a year before Hayes would eventually join him.
“Obviously, when transferring you’re taking a big risk, and so having that comfortability and trust in someone like Ahmad, who I already had a previous relationship with, was very comforting,” Hayes said.
Brown had seen Hayes up close at her best, when she led the Aggies in goals and points during her freshman and sophomore campaigns. During her junior campaign, Hayes dipped to career lows in goals and points, although still managed to reach double digits in the latter.
Hayes moved out to Los Angeles in early May to train hard with a fellow graduate transfer in goalkeeper Laurence Gladu, hungry to improve and return to the form she had known in previous seasons.
“It was tough because I kept putting extra pressure on myself, which at the end of the day just ended up hurting me,” Hayes said. “Being here in the summer, I did use that as extra motivation. Going into every game I have a mindset of wanting to prove people wrong.”
This year, Hayes has already shown what she wanted to show last year but couldn’t. She leads USC with eight goals and 19 points while also being named to the All-Big Ten First Team.
She credits her play this season to the high level of her teammates whom she trains and plays with on an everyday basis. Besides Hayes, nine other Trojans made some sort of All-Big Ten team.
Hayes’ drive to be better and her competitiveness stems from being the youngest of four siblings, including two older sisters and an older brother. USC head coach Jane Alukonis loves this about Hayes, mentioning that she’s one of the fiercest competitors on the squad.
“I think I was just born with it honestly,” Hayes said. “I hate losing. I think with the amount of passion I play with, losing is the end of the world.”
That spirit of hating to lose really rubbed off on the rest of the Trojans. The team had lost only one game for the entire season until they fell short against Rutgers on penalties in the Big Ten tournament semifinals.
One of the main contributors to this run has been graduate goalkeeper Laurence Gladu, a transfer from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been the Trojans’ backbone this entire season. With 10 shutouts, including a crucial one against the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten tournament, Gladu quickly became one of the top keepers in all of NCAA women’s soccer.
She admittedly had an unlikely path to the top. Gladu was born in Montreal, Quebec and as a kid played not only soccer, but ice hockey as well, in true Québécois fashion. She was a goalkeeper in both, but the drastic difference in goaltending styles between the two sports had her switch to the sport she still plays today. But the fundamental similarity between the two has stayed key to her mentality to this day.
“I think it’s more character-wise being the last one in front of the net,” Gladu said. “But obviously yeah, [hockey] came with a couple bad habits I had to get rid of.”
Being a netminder in either sport requires a strong attitude, but with the intelligence that Gladu has, it doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem. Before coming to USC, Gladu attended Penn, an Ivy league institution that is known to be one of the toughest schools in the nation. USC is no walk in the park either, though, but she has loved the support system that Trojans’ soccer has given her.
“I’m super lucky to be able to do a master’s program [at USC],” Gladu said. “The coaches and all the resources I have here make it very easy obviously, but it is still a challenge and being a master’s student has its difficulties.”
The coaches and resources clearly have seemed to help her a lot as Gladu has been a brick wall so far this season. With 10 shutouts thus far, Gladu is third in the Big Ten in clean sheets. She has had some help from her defense who is widely known as one of the top back lines in the nation, but has still picked up 56 saves on the season.
“I have full confidence in my backline,” Gladu said. “They make it super easy for me, the few saves that I have to make make them as easy as possible… I think we are very confident in our ability to win the whole thing and that starts from the back.”
Key to that star-studded backline is Mississippi State transfer Molly McDougal. McDougal finds herself in a different situation to Gladu and is still only a junior, meaning she will have another season with the troy. With the Bulldogs, however, McDougal saw real minutes as early as her freshman year playing in 15 of 22 games.
“Initially, I was really excited to build a program that was turning over,” McDougal said. “[To] be someone that was able to make a difference at a growing program, but obviously things change.”
Things did change indeed, as McDougal signed at the perfect time to play alongside defenders Alyssa Gonzalez, Brooklyn Courtnall and Angeles Escobar. She immediately made an impact on the program, and it was especially because of the style of soccer that head coach Jane Alukonis promotes.
“It’s definitely been a challenge coming from a program that plays a completely opposite style of soccer,” McDougal said. “But that’s honestly what I was looking for, this style of soccer is the style I have grown up playing, played in clubs and [was] looking to play at the college level, which was part of my decision to transfer.”
The very quick transition from the Bulldogs style of play compared to the Trojans could not have been an easy adjustment, but McDougal is certainly making it look relatively simple. She has racked up 1,126 minutes so far this season and looks at home with how the Trojans organize their defense and transition into attack. With strong on-ball defensive capabilities, McDougal also has a keen awareness off the ball, which has been critical for USC this year.
The Trojans constantly look as if they are all on the same page at every moment. The backline has caught many teams offsides just by playing in unison, which is part of what helped them earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
How did the team develop their chemistry so quickly with a host of transfers, though? McDougal credits their brutal travel schedule. In the regular season the Trojans flew close to 15,000 miles over the course of 11 away games, while amassing a record of 9-1-1 on the road.
“I think it’s been a blessing in disguise,” McDougal said. “Everybody’s gotten so close and I think travel speeds up that progress… Even though it’s been tough, I think our record has shown that it hasn’t been something that set us back or prevented us from doing well.”
The “road warriors” as they have been referred to, continue to march onward as the state-of-the-art Rawlinson Stadium is being built just outside USC’s campus ahead of next season. McDougal will be one of the many Trojan returners that will have the opportunity to play in the new stadium, alongside the incoming class of 2025 recruits, officially ranked as the No. 10 class in the nation.
Before the Big Ten tournament, USC faced its inner-city rivals UCLA in a match that decided the Big Ten regular season championship on the final day of the regular season. The stakes felt higher not only due to the intense rivalry, but also from playing on the main field at Dignity Health Park Stadium, where the MLS’ LA Galaxy also play.
Hundreds of fans donning cardinal and gold came in support, including many of the players’ friends and family. Hayes mentioned that at least one of her parents has been to every one of her collegiate games and her sisters have been to many as well.
Hayes said that she’s an emotional person and struggled to fall asleep the night before the UCLA match because she was so anxious.
She was confident going into the game that the Trojans would prevail, controlling that anxiety and channeling it into excitement. Hayes ended up scoring the winning goal in a 1-0 victory, nutmegging UCLA’s goalkeeper and becoming USC’s hero on the day.
“I generally blacked out when I scored that goal, because it was the greatest feeling ever,” Hayes said. “I can’t explain it, but I had to bite my hand so that I wouldn’t shed a few tears.”
Now, USC will look to do it all over again when the No. 1 Trojans take on Saint Louis for their second game in the NCAA Tournament after cruising to a 5-0 victory over Sacramento State Sunday. Winning more is something that’s been on the team’s mind as of late.
“Having that winning feeling is like a drug, you crave that feeling again,” Hayes said. “We as a team are really excited for the NCAA’s because it’s another opportunity to have that feeling again.”