Sport: Soccer
Born: July 16, 1982
Town: Delran, New Jersey
Carli Anne Lloyd was born July 16, 1982 in Delran, NJ. She was one of three children born to Pam and Stephen Lloyd. Youth soccer was a popular sport in the Philadelphia suburb and Carli began playing at the age of five. Within a couple of years, she demonstrated a special aptitude for the game and an appetite for practice and training. By the time she made the Delran High Bears varsity in 1997, Carli was an accomplished midfielder who could control the flow of a game with her dribbling and passing.
Playing for coach Rudy Klobach, Carli was named New Jersey Player of the Year as a junior and senior, averaging a goal a game. In her final year, she netted 26 goals in 21 games. Carli was a Parade All-American in 1999 and 2000, attracting a slew of scholarship offers and earning a spot with the W-League Central Jersey Splash and New Brunswick Power as a teenager. After graduation, she suited up briefly for the New Jersey Wildcats, a club that included future US National Teammates Tobin Heath and Heather O’Reilly.
Carli followed in the footsteps of another Delran High soccer star, Peter Vermes, and chose to attend Rutgers. She was the team’s leading scorer as a freshman and was named Big East Rookie of the Year in 2001. As a sophomore, she was a Hermann Trophy finalist. Under the tutelage of Glenn Crooks, Carli was a first-team All-Big East midfielder in each of her four varsity seasons for the Scarlet Knights and was conference Midfielder of the Year in 2004. She graduated as the first Rutgers athlete—man or woman—to earn fist-team all-conference honors four years in a row. She also set school marks with 50 goals and 117 points.
While in college, Carli began building her international résumé as a member of the U.S. Under-21 team. But when she tried out for the Under-23 squad, she was astonished to be cut. The coaches felt she was undisciplined and lacked the commitment to fitness that would be required to take the next step and move up to the senior team. Carli contemplated leaving the game, but her father convinced her to work with trainer James Galanis to reach the next level. Soon she was doing 1,000 sit-ups and 500 push-ups a day, and working on drills to improve her touch around the goal. Galanis also convinced her to play with a chip on her shoulder, and in many ways that came to define her personality as a person and a player. However, it also created a decade-long rift between Carli and her parents.
Carli got the call-up to the national team in the summer of 2005, against Ukraine, and scored her first goal a year later, against Taiwan. She became a starter for the team during the Algarve Cup in Portugal, in 2006. During the 2007 Algarve Cup, Carli came into her own as an international star, netting four goals and being named tournament MVP. She was also a key player in the Women’s World Cup in 2007, in which Team USA finished a disappointing third. On the year, Carli scored nine times—third-best on the squad—and distinguished herself as one of the game’s deadliest long-range shooters.
The 2008 season saw Carli’s star continue to shine. She was named US Soccer Athlete of the Year after registering 9 goals and 9 assists in 35 starts. Two of those goals were game-winners during the 2008 Olympics—one against Japan in group play and the other in the gold-medal final against Brazil, which broke a 0–0 deadlock six minutes into extra time. She scored the “golden goal” against Brazil after redirecting a pass to Amy Rodriguez, a forward, and jetting toward the net. Rodriguez rolled it back to her on the dead run. Carli beat her defender and then blasted a dipping shot into the net from 19 yards away. When she returned to New Jersey, her hometown held a parade in her honor.
Carli continued to play a starring role for Team USA in 2009, while also suiting up for the Chicago Red Stars of the Women’s Professional Soccer League in its inaugural season. An ankle injury during a 2010 league game sidelined her for much of year. However, she played a key role in Team USA’s qualifying run to the 2011 World Cup—including a great performance in the team’s 2011 Algarve Cup championship. In July 2011, Carli scored her first goal in World Cup play, against Colombia. Team USA reached the final, but lost to Japan in a shootout.
America had better luck in 2012. Team USA won the Olympic Qualifying tournament in Vancouver, and Carli notched her first international hat trick in a 3–0 win over Costa Rica. At the 2012 London Olympics, Carli scored twice during the group stage, then exploded for both goals in Team USA’s 2–1 victory over Japan in the gold medal final. Carli thus became the first player—man or woman—to score gold medal-winning goals in two Olympics. A few months later, Carli was named 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year. In 2013, she scored her 46th career goal for the U.S. squad, surpassing Julie Foudy as Team USA’s all-time top-scoring midfielder.
During qualifying for the 2015 World Cup, Carli found the net in victories over Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico. In the 2014 CONCACAF final, she scored one of Team USA’s six goals in a shutout of Costa Rica. In the final month of 2014, Carli netted four goals in the Tournament of Brasilia to bring her international total to 61.
At the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada, Carli played beautifully at midfield as the Americans won their group and advanced to the knockout round. Against Colombia in the Round of 16, Megan Rapinoe was fouled in the box and Carli netted the penalty kick to seal a 2–0 victory. The Colombians should have expected a Lloyd goal—she had scored in every one of their previous meetings. In the quarterfinals, Carli appeared in her 200th international match, captaining the US squad against China. A few minutes into the second half, she broke a scoreless tie with a header in the bottom right corner off a hard cross by Julie Johnston. Goalkeeper Hope Solo made the 1–0 lead stand up and the Americans advanced to the semifinals for the seventh time in a row.
Carli broke a scoreless tie again in the semifinals against the Germans, who were actually rated as a slight favorite heading into the match. She took a second-half penalty kick after Alex Morgan was dragged down in front of goalie Nadine Angerer. Carli calmly drilled a shot into the left corner to give team USA a precious 1–0 lead. Fifteen minutes later, Carli made a power move at the left side of the box and put a short cross onto the foot of Kelley O’Hara. O’Hara scored the first goal of her international career to make the final score 2–0.
In the gold medal final, Carli found an entirely new level of greatness. She personally blew apart Japan’s game plan to control the action by scoring two quick goals off set plays. She added a third on a long, arcing ball struck near midfield that caught Ayumi Kaihri too far from her net. As the Japanese goalkeeper tried to backpedal, she lost the ball in the sun, stumbled and could not tip the ball away. Carli’s hat trick made the score 4–0. Team USA went on to win 5–2. Late in the game, Abby Wambach subbed in for Tobin Heath. Carli peeled the blue captain’s band from her arm and wrapped it around Abby’s. Carli played aggressively from whistle to whistle, never letting up for a moment against Japan. She was awarded the Golden Ball as tournament MVP. Her hat trick was the fastest in the history of World Cup play and boosted her international goal total to 69.
Carli and her teammates were heralded with a tickertape parade in New York—the first women’s team to be accorded this honor—and she was awarded the key to the city by mayor Bill Di Blasio. The team also made a White House visit that fall.
Carli was named FIFA’s Player of the Year for 2015. She continued her offensive explosion in 2016, scoring three times in a friendly match against Ireland and once each in Olympic qualifier victories over Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. In the 2016 Olympics, Carli scored twice in the group stage, but could not repeat her game-changing World Cup performance against Sweden in the quarterfinals. The Swedes defeated Team USA in a shootout, eliminating them from medal contention. It marked the first time Carli had not reached at least the semifinals of an international tournament.
Six weeks later, the Americans were back on the pitch in a friendly against Colombia. Carli netted three goals in a 9–0 victory and followed that up with the 94th goal of her career in a 3–0 win against the Netherlands. She capped off her 2016 season with a second straight FIFA Player of the Year trophy.
And a wedding. She married golf pro Brian Hollins—her high school sweetheart—in November.
In 2019, Carli found herself in the spotlight once again during the World Cup. She scored in each of the team’s first two games—once against Thailand and twice against Chile. Including the last four matches in the 2015 WWC, that made it six goal-scoring games in a row, a record (for men and women) in World Cup play. Team USA went on to defeat the Netherlands 2–0 in the final to win the championship of international soccer for the fourth time.
Carli and her teammates set their sights on the 2020 Olympics. She scored her 122nd international goal against Haiti in an Olympic qualifier played in Houston on January 28th and her 123rd against England on March 5th in the SheBelievesCup in Orlando. That was the last soccer competition completed before COVID shut the sport down. The Olympics were moved to 2021 and Carli, closing in on 39, decided to make it her last year in soccer.
A gold medal would have made for a storybook ending, but that is not how soccer works. The US team fell to Canada 1–0 in the semifinals on a penalty kick and had to settle for a berth in the bronze medal match against Australia. With the Americans holding a 2–1 lead after 45 minutes, Carli scored in injury time to make the score 3–1. She scored again early in the second half, which turned out to be the deciding goal in a 4–3 victory.
Carli continued to play for national team in the weeks that followed, including a historic match in September against Paraguay in Cleveland. She scored five times in a 9–0 victory to move past Kristine Lilly on the all-time list with 133 international goals. She scored on a header, a left-footed one-timer, a soft touch off a long pass, an open-net shot after a perfect cross and another header, this one off a corner kick. It was Carli’s 24th and final multi-goal game. She also became the oldest player to score five goals in a game.
Five days later, in a rematch with Paraguay, Calri scored the 134th goal of her international career. Her final game came in November when she suited up for NJ/NY Gotham in the NWSL playoffs against the Chicago Red Stars. She was listed as Carli Anne Hollins in the lineup.