Practice Helps Senior Score Elusive First Goal

For weeks, Anna Keeling ’26 stayed after practice and worked on one play.

Run up the right side, aim, and fire. 

But for the Colgate Women’s Soccer senior, the result was always the same: Each shot went high, near post.

Thus, her assistant coach, Haley Hilliard, instructed her to try again. And again. And again, tweaking her technique in the process — until Keeling could hit the far post with a low shot.

If she could pull that off, goals would follow.

And for Keeling, now in her final season as a Raider, she was still searching for that elusive first goal in maroon-and-white. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Part of the challenge was the wing back was recruited as a defender and still maintained a defense-first mindset. Keeling knew she had to think like a forward.

Then on Oct. 18, during a road game at Loyola, Keeling found herself sprinting up the right side of the field, with only the goalkeeper to beat, thanks to a perfect pass from teammate Ari Bezanson.

She fired from the same spot where she and Hilliard ran their drills. After often missing the target in practice, the outcome this time was far different.

The shot blasted past the goalkeeper, low and far post, and into the net. The goal helped the Raiders secure a 3-0 conference win.

At last, Keeling had her first career goal.

“That was awesome,” Keeling said. “It’s definitely something I’ve been struggling with. I was recruited as a defender, so I have a very defensive mindset. I’ve been really working on attacking and thinking about scoring.”

Keeling, a native of Irvine, Calif., a city south of Los Angeles, was a defender on her high school and club soccer teams. 

When she joined the Raiders in the fall of 2022, she was moved to the forward position. Keeling welcomed the opportunity to help the team in any way, regardless of her position. Whether she played sparingly or none at all was fine by her. She was simply happy to be on the team. 

She made her debut in Colgate's first game of the season at Providence, recording 26 minutes of action. She ended up playing in all 17 regular season games, while making eight starts.

“I came in as a freshman and I was like, ‘I’m happy to be here. Whatever happens this season, it’s going to be good,’” she said. “I was thrown in as a forward, and I was like, ‘I’m happy to be here and happy to be playing soccer at this school.’ And then when I started building minutes and eventually started starting in my freshman year, it was beyond my wildest expectations.”

In her second year, she was moved back to defense and started in all 20 regular season games.

Then as a junior, her coaches tried something new: Keeling was made a wing back, a hybrid of defense and forward. She started in 12 out of 15 games.

Keeling remained a wing back this season while starting in 13 out of 19 contests.

“It has been an adjustment each year, switching positions mentally, but it’s nice that they trust me to play multiple positions,” she said. “And I really do enjoy playing wing back. I do a little bit of both — offense and defense — which is nice. It’s a lot of running.”

Keeling had to wait until Game 18 out of a 20-game season of her final year at Colgate to score a goal. But it doesn’t matter to her.

It was a moment she’ll never forget.

And it was a moment that was part of a special season for the Raiders, who finished second in the Patriot League, achieving their best outcome in years. 

It was also special for Keeling and her class, who had grown together, overcoming obstacles before having their best season in a maroon and white uniform.

“Our class typically has always played a lot,” she said. “We have grown a lot. We have been conscious about integrating the first years in the team. They’ve all played a really significant role in our success.”

One of the most educational moments for Keeling, a neuroscience major, happened as an intern in the summer of 2024.

She spent a few weeks at a summer camp in Colorado that was tailored for children with autism, ADHD, and other special needs. One big aspect of the camp was that it provided intensive therapy as well as fun activities. 

“I was working with a therapist to help children,” she said. “Obviously, I wasn’t applying therapy. But I was learning from them. I was observing and shadowing.

“It was a really special place. That’s when I really connected with this line of work,” she said.

Keeling began her college experience as a psychology major, but soon switched to neuroscience after discovering — at an intro-level psychology course — that she was fascinated with the functions of the brain. 

“I think the brain is so cool because we are still learning things about it, and every time I’m assigned a paper to read, I was like, ‘Wow, people are doing super cool cutting edge research,’” she said. “There are things we still don’t know, and I find that fascinating.”

She took a few more neuroscience courses before she realized she wanted to become a speech language pathologist, treating neurodivergent children.

Thus, when Keeling began her work at the camp, the experience was further proof that was on the right path academically. 

From that point on, she took courses to prepare her for studying speech language pathology in graduate school.

Then last summer, Keeling enriched her education further by interning at a therapy clinic near her home.

“I worked directly with two speech language pathologists,” she said. “It was play-based therapy, which I really enjoyed. It was child-first, and the kids really responded to that. I was shadowing and observing, and also they let me in on a lot of the sessions. It got to interact with the kids, which was awesome.”

One moment that stood out to Keeling happened at her most recent internship, where she saw a child progress from speaking only a few phrases to a much more expansive and communicative vocabulary in just a few months, she said.

“My internships allowed me to wholeheartedly confirm I was going down the path that was meant for me, and they have prepared me for graduate school applications,” she said.

As for life after Colgate, Keeling has applied to grad schools. Her goal is to obtain a master’s of science in speech language pathology and then enter the work field.

After leaving the year-round summer weather of Southern California for a school at the other end of the country, Keeling has achieved everything she wanted out of college.

“Studying at Colgate has been really amazing,” she said. “The first couple of years were nice. If I had gone to a bigger school, I probably would have become a psychology major, which is fine. But the liberal arts criteria allowed me to explore. I’m grateful for that.”