NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sydney Watts didn’t instigate one of the earliest goal celebrations she can recall. Oh, sure, she scored the goal in question. The 2025 SEC Forward of the Year has always had a knack for doing that. But at least as Watts remembers the now-distant youth soccer event, it was her mom, a former collegiate soccer player in her own right, who ran onto the field to hug her daughter before play resumed.
Anyone who has hugged a stranger, thrown a beverage in the air or yelled until they’re hoarse after their team puts the ball in the back of the net can empathize. Goals move people to uncommon emotions. And few people in a Vanderbilt uniform—only one this century—have scored them more regularly than Watts this fall. With 14 goals entering Vanderbilt’s NCAA Tournament second-round game against Clemson, the junior not only leads all SEC players this season but is tied for sixth in program single-season history.
Watts, of course, didn’t set out to break records. Once upon a time, scoring goals was more of a survival mechanism. She grew up playing mostly as a central midfielder, pulling the strings and setting up those around her. But as she climbed the ladder of elite club soccer, she found the depth chart crowded. She’d run all the sprints and put in all the necessary hours in practice, only to end up playing a handful of mop-up minutes at the end of games.
During one showcase tournament bringing together clubs from across the country, her team was short a center forward—a No. 9, in soccer parlance. She played and scored. When she kept scoring in subsequent games, she kept playing. (Interestingly, a basketball junkie who briefly entertained the thought of playing that sport in college, she made a similar hardwood progression from point guard, setting up others, to scoring guard.)
The newly-minted striker got everyone’s attention. A two-time Kansas Gatorade Player of the Year at St. Thomas Aquinas in the Kansas City area, she once scored 37 goals in a high school season. She picked Vanderbilt because it offered a chance to compete at the highest level for the biggest prizes, but also because it was just about the only school that made visiting a classroom as much a part of her official visit as the soccer facilities.
“You can’t just skate your way through Vanderbilt, and that is something that students here take a lot of pride in,” Watts said. “There’s a reason that at some point we’re going to have…