At the end of Gracie Sullivan’s freshman year at Drexel, the women’s soccer coaching staff approached her with a message: the starting goalkeeper position for next season was “up for grabs.”
Sammy Widnick was transferring and Zara Wickert was graduating, leaving an opening at goalie.
“That just pushed me because I felt like I knew I could do it,” Sullivan said. “It was just whether I wanted to do it or not.”
Sullivan did not see the field during her freshman season, but that is common for a first-year student adjusting to the collegiate level.
She used the season to learn from the goalkeepers ahead of her and spent the offseason working for her opportunity.
“You can always say, ‘Do you want this?’ And they’ll say, ‘Yes.’ But then in training, you need to see the want and desire to develop,” said Mike Paznokas, Drexel’s assistant women’s soccer coach. “It was awesome because in the one-on-one sessions we did, you got to see that. You saw [Sullivan] asking questions, you saw her working her butt off in those sessions to make sure that she’s getting better and understanding the concepts we went over.”
Sullivan is now the starting goalie for the Dragons and had a career-best 10 saves against La Salle on Aug. 28, which is the most saves by an individual Drexel keeper since 2017. Entering Thursday’s match against Hampton, Sullivan has 42 saves so far this season.
The sophomore’s accomplishment has come as no surprise to Paznokas.
“She is very level-headed and when she’s in the game and her brain’s turned off, she can perform amazing things as a goalkeeper,” Paznokas said. “So, not a shock to me she was able to achieve this in the slightest.”
The relationship she built with the other goalies fueled her desire to get better even though she wasn’t seeing playing time as a freshman.
“I really did look up to [Widnick], the starter goalie who was in front of me,” Sullivan said. “I really think she taught me and I just looked up to her during the sessions. There’s always a feeling of tension between goalies and last year there was three of us and there was no tension at all. Without them, I don’t think my freshman year would have been as enjoyable not playing as it was. But we were just so supportive of each other.”
During spring training, Sullivan had extensive one-on-one training with Paznokas, he said, where she improved her feet in possession, long distance distribution, and communication skills.
Soccer runs deep in the Sullivan family. Her grandfather and father played soccer at Holy Family and her second cousins, Cavan and Quinn, play for the Union. Cavan, 16, earned an invitation to the U.S. men’s national team last week.
“I would say that all of the Sullivans, no matter first or second cousins, we’re all very close,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see the different places soccer takes our family.”
Gracie Sullivan started playing soccer at 7 years old for Coppa at the Philadelphia Soccer Club. During her freshman year at Nazareth Academy, she started playing for FC Bucks, now HEX FC.
She originally started as a midfielder in youth soccer. But when she played in the Beach Blast soccer tournament at the Jersey Shore, it sparked her love at goalkeeper.
“I was crazy as a kid, so when we would play Beach Blast, I would be like no I want to play the whole game because I love diving around in the sand,” she said. “So ever since I was 10, I stuck to goalie.”
This is Shannon Grogan’s first season at the helm for the 4-4-1 Dragons. Sullivan believes the culture shift has driven Drexel’s success.
“This year with the new coaching staff, [Grogan] just brought so much energy and really believes in us, which I think shines down on us and then we believe in ourselves,” Sullivan said. “The team culture has just been so much different and I think on and off the field we have been such close friends and I can really see that on the field and that’s helping us win games honestly.”
Playing goalkeeper comes with a unique pressure, Sullivan said. One little mistake can alter the outcome of the game.
“The hardest part of being a goalie is that we have to be turned on at all times because if we make one mistake that could lose us the game,” she said. “It’s different if a forward were to make a mistake because the ball wouldn’t go in the back of the net. So it’s really important that we have to be our best at all times because if we’re not, then we sometimes could cost our team the game. It just sinks in more to you than it does to anybody else because you feel like you let your team down.”
Though, the Dragons don’t dwell on individual mistakes, she added.
“We all take accountability whether you’re on the bench or you’re playing,” Sullivan said. “We can’t point fingers because that’s not how you’re going to win a game.”
