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sa Goldstock’s first look into her lacrosse future happened shortly after she picked up a newspaper in late November 2010. The story that stuck out: a local name she knew well had committed to one of the nation’s top lacrosse schools. She headed to recreation league practice that day with a goal set for the years ahead.

“I just hoped I’d be on the newspaper the day I committed,” Goldstock said.

The name in the headline was Kayla Treanor. She was a model for many lacrosse players in Niskayuna, New York, the Albany suburb where they lived, and eventually set a standard for success across the country. She became the all-time goals leader (260) at Syracuse, a mark that ranks sixth in NCAA history, and was declared the “greatest Syracuse player of all time,” by SU head coach Gary Gait. But none idolized her more than Goldstock, who’d been a recognized lacrosse talent since middle school.

Now a sophomore at Syracuse, Goldstock has admired Treanor since she was about 10 years old. Goldstock’s upbringing laid the framework for what would eventually be her future home. It elevated her to 2016’s No. 3 recruit and the top-ranked goalie, per Inside Lacrosse. Treanor and Goldstock’s partnership created a family-like bond that follows Goldstock with every new step she takes and as she aims to mold herself into the player everyone predicted she could be.

“(Kayla)’s everything,” Goldstock said. “I work so hard because I want to be half the player she is.”

But, at SU, Goldstock’s numbers don’t tell the same story as Treanor’s did early in her career. Last season, as a freshman, she ranked 51st in the country in goals-against average (11.96), 65th in save percentage (.412) and was often the last woman to beat on the scoring defense that ranked 55th out of 111 teams.

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Coming to SU the same year as the shot clock changed the college game did no favors for her performance, said Halley Quillinan Griggs, the women’s editor at Inside Lacrosse and a former Syracuse player. This year, Syracuse added the No. 1 goalie recruit in the last recruiting cycle in Hannah Van Middelem. Though Gait said Goldstock is the Orange’s “No. 1” that SU will continue to play to if she’s “lights out,” he provided no guarantees that Goldstock’s job remains entirely secure.

“Anything can happen,” Gait said. “It’s lacrosse.”

The divide between her peers’ anticipation and her actuality was hard to understand for those who followed her earlier in her career, who spoke highly of her natural ability. Goldstock still had it. They could see it with her dazzling stick work as she soft tossed with teammates. She still cradled and twisted the ball in her stick pocket and made passes behind her back with precision.

Those close to Goldstock remember her finest moments, the ones when she imitated skills Treanor used in post-practice shooting sessions with Goldstock since eighth grade. They remember the clearing ability, the speed out of the net, the aggressiveness to attack the ball and push it ahead.

Yet the same tendencies to test her own limits that refined her elite skills and set her apart are the ones enabling her mistakes.

When Goldstock hit adversity for the first time at SU, Gait afforded her time to try and figure things out because, though Syracuse’s up-and-down performance reflected her adjustment to the college game, she always found herself nestled comfortably in the starting goalkeeper’s position.

But following the Orange’s earliest exit from the NCAA tournament in a year it qualified since 2006, the Orange needs more. And she expects it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever not think I could play better,” Goldstock said. “I know I can.”

• • •

Growing up in Niskayuna, Goldstock always knew of Treanor, because her lacrosse talent brought the spotlight to a close-knit community. The two first met when Treanor served as one of Goldstock’s coaches on her recreation league team, where Goldstock picked up playing goalie. A converted attack from when she played in a boys’ league at a young age, Goldstock started making plays in and out of the net, in part due to her advanced strength and size for her age.

By the time Goldstock was in middle school, she had already found herself developing into the best goalie in her hometown. In eighth grade, she won the starting job on the Niskayuna High School varsity team. From her spot in goal, she spied then-senior and Syracuse-bound Treanor playing up the field. It seemed that Treanor noticed Goldstock, too.

“Kayla always had this great way of seeing players with great potential,” said Ritchie Assini, Treanor’s long-time friend and former teammate.

But with Goldstock, there seemed to be more. Treanor took Goldstock “under her wing,” Goldstock said.

Goldstock said she had a rough home life and didn’t have the best relationship with her father, L.J., whom she lived with in Niskayuna following her parents’ divorce at a young age. She lived with her father from age 10 to 16.

After the separation, Tiffany Moore, Goldstock’s mother, had moved about an hour north of New York City to Middletown, but Goldstock stayed in Niskayuna because Middletown didn’t have lacrosse.

Goldstock still calls Moore her “best friend and biggest supporter” and said Moore has helped guide her through some of the biggest changes in her life, like swapping high schools.

Moore declined to be interviewed for this story and L.J. did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Orange.

So, Treanor began taking responsibility for Goldstock’s well-being on the field, Goldstock said. The senior would drive her to practice and keep her to shoot afterward as both players honed their craft.

Treanor showed Goldstock every shot in her arsenal and the eighth grader began picking up skills. As their bond quickly became less of teammates and more of close family members, Treanor said the things they did for one another became less significant, because they were supposed to do them. They were “sisters.”

“With Kayla, her actions speak louder than words,” Assini said. “It might be hard to express with her words how much someone means to her. We’ll never get it out of Kayla how much Asa means to her.”

Treanor’s family eventually became the same to Goldstock, and she started spending large amounts of time at their house and slept there some nights. She “wasn’t really happy living at home,” she said, and eventually started living with the Treanors full time.

“I kind of just moved in,” Goldstock said. “Now, I live there.”

Treanor’s home became Goldstock’s. In the bedroom the Treanors now call “The Dormitory,” Goldstock said there are two queen beds. One for Treanor, one for Goldstock. And for the rest of her time at home she stayed there before she set off for her new home in Syracuse.

• • •

No one plays goalie like Goldstock, those close to her who play the sport said. She insists she brings something new to the table even if it is a trait that scares some individuals.

“Doing flashy things like (throwing long clears) is pretty fun,” Goldstock said. “People take it too seriously sometimes, so it’s kind of fun to do things that people want to see.”

Those risks have paid off. In the Under Armour All-American game in her senior year of high school, she excited the crowd and the ESPNU viewers with a booming clear that made it all the way down field and into the pocket of an attacker who scored. Goldstock got the assist.

Treanor herself remembered playing Goldstock last season as an assistant coach for Harvard and Goldstock assisted on the game-winning goal of an overtime game.

“Asa is part of the group that shattered the mold,” Griggs said, “where you now put your best athlete in goal.”

Goldstock was widely known of by the time she reached 10th grade. When she accompanied Moore and her brother, Griffen, for his visit to New Hampton (New Hampshire) High School, word that Goldstock was on campus reached Jenna Simon, the New Hampton varsity women’s lacrosse coach. She sat down with Goldstock hoping to pique her interest in transferring there. To bolster her case, Simon brought in then-SU pledges Allie Munroe, a current defender for the women’s hockey team, and Tyler Lydon, a former Syracuse basketball forward now in the Denver Nuggets organization, “just to say hi.”

Eventually, Goldstock transferred. At New Hampton, Simon saw the goalie’s natural ability that everyone seemed to rave about and that sometimes became her kryptonite. Goldstock’s strength, which had always been a part of her game, sometimes led her to launch a pass three-quarters down the field after making a big save that would be intercepted.

“Though at times it was frustrating,” Simon said, “she’s so athletic, she shines that way sometimes, too.”

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Goldstock’s tendencies led to turnovers more times than once and, in certain situations, Simon said, the coaching staff at New Hampton had to instruct her to “hold back.”

Occasional brilliance masked the mistakes and made it difficult to parse when a play was really too risky for Goldstock to attempt.

At Syracuse last season, despite starting all 22 games, she only played the full 60 minutes in 12 of them as Gait switched her in and out of goal. Her talents struggled to transition to the faster NCAA game as she let in 11 or more goals 13 times, including a season-worst 19 against Boston College in the Eagles’ drubbing in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

When Syracuse exercised patience with her struggles, it asked Goldstock to do the same. On March 5 against Virginia in the Carrier Dome, Goldstock had one of her worst stretches of the season, allowing the Cavaliers to open the game by scoring five-straight goals.

Gait motioned Goldstock to the sideline and she trotted over expecting the worst. She didn’t expect to go back in. On the sideline, she heard just what she expected to hear.

“Just watch,” she remembered Gait saying.

So, she did. She stood there and watched the defense as they settled in and reflected on the mistakes she made earlier. To her surprise, the reflection ended in less than 90 seconds. Gait inserted her back into the game after just spending just 1:21 on the sideline.

Her “three-second memory,” which she said helped her forget about the last play after a mistake, had to return.

When it was over, the Orange had won even though Goldstock allowed 13 goals in what she said was “one of the worst performances of her career.”

Looking back now, though, Goldstock maintained that win was one of her best moments in her time with the Orange.

After the excitement passed, she set off to watch film. She re-lived the mistakes she made. She noticed what she could’ve done better. She does this again and again, hoping it’ll eventually click.

• • •

At a recent practice on the field at Ensley Athletic Center, Goldstock stood on the end line adjacent to the goal. She had just broken away from her warmup drills and surveyed the field where all her teammates stood in two vertical lines down each sideline, playing catch.

This was the place she’d always dreamed she’d be because of the person she’d dreamed of being. Treanor had always kept the doors to her home open for Goldstock to make it her own.

Her teammates tossed the ball back and forth, talking little and listening to the music thundering in the facility. Then, without context, Goldstock screamed “Go Cuse,” and it rang throughout the large complex.

Last season, she said, her inexperience hindered her from developing the leadership abilities vital to a goalie’s success. Treanor had always been an icon that Goldstock was honored to follow, but now it was time for her to become one herself. She needed her own voice, and she needed it to be heard.

“Being a goalie,” Goldstock said, “you need to be louder than everyone else.”

Syracuse needs it as much as she does.

Banner photo by Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

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Published on February 4, 2018 at 9:11 pm

Contact Michael: [email protected] | @MikeJMcCleary