Little did we know, Alyssa Naeher once dreamt of being one of Geno Auriemma’s Huskies.

“I loved playing basketball, my first dream was to go to UConn and play in the WNBA,” Naeher told members of the SCSU women’s soccer team on Friday night. “Being from Connecticut, UConn basketball was the center of attention. … Basketball was definitely my first passion.”

Naeher did scored more than 2,000 points in high school. But after she saw a women’s World Cup game in person, she began steering toward the soccer road to the Olympics. She went to a camp in Fairfield County where players learned goalkeeping skills in the morning, field skills in the afternoon. Naeher never made it to the afternoon session; she found her calling in the front of the net.

“Even when she was about 12, she just had so much raw talent,” said Jim O’Brien, one of her first coaches with the Olympic Development program. “We just had to refine that.”

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Naeher, from Stratford, 5 feet 9 and exceptionally rangy, became the best in the world at the sport and position she chose, achieving the ultimate in women’s soccer fame last summer in anchoring the U.S. Women’s National Team as it came home from the Paris Olympics with the gold medal. Retiring from international play on top at age 37 last fall, Naeher will be honored in a ceremony before the national team plays Portugal in a friendly match at Rentschler Field on Sunday at 4 p.m.

“It’s going to be really special,” Naeher said before her talk at Southern’s Lyman Auditorium in an event that raised funds for the school’s women’s soccer program. “Just to even have an opportunity to have a retirement moment, a ceremony, is incredible and I’m very grateful that it’s here in Connecticut that so many of my teammates and coaches and family and friends are going to be able to see it.”

Naeher will have about 75 supporters at Rentschler, including members of her pro team, Chicago Stars FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. She hasn’t made any decisions about retiring altogether, but she felt it was the right time to turn the USWNT goalkeeping duties over to the next generation. In leading the U.S. back to the top of the world, Naeher has left her mark.

“I’m fan-girling right now,” said Abby Aughe, SCSU’s senior keeper. “She’s been my idol since I was a little kid. She’s like a badass in goal.”

Naeher played soccer and basketball  at Christian Heritage School in Trumbull, and soccer at the club and developmental level before going to Penn State, where she was a two-time All-American. Her twin sister, Amanda, scored 108 goals for Division III Messiah University, still the school record.

Olympic hero Alyssa Naeher, from Stratford, meets with SCSU women’s soccer coach Adam Cohen Friday. (Dom Amore/Hartford Courant)

Alyssa has been playing pro soccer in the U.S. and Europe since 2010, and made her first appearance with the U.S. national team in 2014. She became the primary goalkeeper from 2016, taking over for Hope Solo after the Brazil Olympics, through Dec. 3, 2024, when she posted a 2-1 victory over Argentina.

Last summer was the pinnacle of pressure and achievement, as the U.S. team reclaimed the gold, its first since 2012. Naeher had four clean sheets, and made a series of brilliant saves, including a late kick save to seal a semifinal win over Germany.

“It was just magical summer,” Naeher said. “It was just a very special group to be a part of, honestly, just to see everybody’s journey. One of the coolest things about being part of any team is seeing everyone’s individual journey coming together for one common goal and how that intermixes with yourself. It’s hard to put into words what that feels like, but it’s an experience I will always cherish.”

After retuning to the NWSL, she scored a goal for Chicago in August. “It’s very satisfying to see the ball go in the back of the net,” Naeher said. “I get why Amanda wanted to play forward.”

When the national team plays in East Hartford on Sunday Naeher, who was only the second goalkeeper to win U.S. Soccer’s Female Player of the Year, thinks fans will notice the youthfulness.

“They’re going to see that young hunger,” she said. “We set the bar high last summer with winning the gold medal. That youthful exuberance, I think you’re going to see a very high ceiling for the group. It’s just a matter of coming together and finding that chemistry.”

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Casey Murphy,  Jane Campbell, Aubrey Kingsbury, Phallon Tullis-Joyce and Mandy Haught are among the candidates to fill Naeher’s enormous shoes.

“They have a great group of goalkeepers they’re choosing from,” Naeher said, “they’re going to keep competing, keep playing, I’m excited to see who comes out.”

Last January, the UConn women’s basketball team invited Naeher to see their game at DePaul, where she met the soon-to-be national champs and told Auriemma she once wanted to play for him. Everything changed when she got to see her future, saw what the top of the women’s soccer world looked like, and there began the quest, which has now come full circle.

“The first time soccer was the real big dream, I went to the opening game of the 1999 World Cup at the Meadowlands (in New Jersey),” Naeher said. “And it was the first time as an 11-year-old kid I thought, ‘This would be really cool to do some day.’ But never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d have the career I’ve been fortunate enough to have.

“It’s the power of being able to see it. If I hadn’t been able to see that game, I wouldn’t have had that dream and that’s something I take very seriously, even now, to inspire that next 11-year-old player.”

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UConn’s George Springer has added another epic postseason moment o his resume. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Connecticut’s Series

There’s a whole lot of Connecticut represented in the Blue Jays-Dodgers World Series. UConn’s George Springer guaranteed that Monday night with his epic Game 7 home run in the ALCS, lifting Toronto to its first Series since 1993. In addition, he took his sister, Lena, into the spotlight with him.

Lena Springer has been the softball coach at Trinity since 2024, leading them to 24 wins and the conference final in her first season. Though she’s planning her wedding, she has been in Toronto with the family for the postseason, and George was asked about her in the wild postgame scene.

“She knows the game; we talk a lot,” George said. “… She kind of gets on my case a little bit more than I would like her to.”

What about? “Everything,” he said. Lena’s response, via social media, “Just doing my job.”

George, the World Series MVP in 2017, now has 23 postseason home runs, that sign-stealing mess in Houston receding as it should, into the past. Meanwhile, another UConn grad, Pete Walker from East Lyme, continued to skillfully handle Toronto’s pitching staff. A baseball lifer, Walker, drafted by the Mets in 1990, is in his first World Series.

UConn’s Ben Casparius, from Westport, and Darien’s Emmet Sheehan are in the Dodger bullpen. Another former UConn player, Eric Yavarone from North Haven, is going for a third ring as the Dodgers strength-and-conditioning coach.

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Debating the SCORE

Among her talking points at Big East Media Day, commissioner Val Ackerman expressed the league’s strong support for the SCORE Act now in the U.S. House of Representatives, as the best legislation considered so far. The bipartisan bill aims to create federal standards for college athletics, including NIL, and provide a limited antitrust exemption.

Several senators, including Connecticut Democrats Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, signed on to a letter in opposition to the SCORE Act later in the week.

“Given the NCAA’s long and well-documented history of exploiting college athletes, we strongly oppose the antitrust exemption included in the SCORE Act. There is no question that Congress must intervene to reform the college athletics ecosystem to benefit college athletes. However, such reform cannot include broad antitrust immunity for the NCAA,” their statement read.

UConn could really miss freshman Braylon Mullins (24) in the important early-season games he will miss. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

Sunday short takes

*Except for March, Braylon Mullins’ ankle injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for the UConn men. If he is out the next six weeks he would miss games vs. BYU, Arizona, Illinois and Kansas, and would just be returning in time for games vs. Florida and Texas in early December. Those six are games in which the Huskies will need to win their share to get the tournament seeding they crave, and they’ll need shooting to win them.

*Bristol Central’s Ashley Elder, who broke state records in the discus competing for the Rams, and was a Division II All-America in the shot put in 2020, will be inducted into the Southern New Hampshire University athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday.

*Author Mike Whaley will be signing copies his book, “Floor Burns,” Nov. 8 at the Wood-n-Tap in Farmington at 1 p.m. The book is filled with richly detailed stories of New England small-college basketball.

*Speaking of books, got my copy of Dave Borges’ “Hurley’s Heroes,” the beat writer’s behind-the-scenes stories of the UConn men’s last few years. It’s well worth a read. (So that makes three books to stuff the Huskies fan’s stockings this year, just saying.)

*Speaking of small college, New England basketball, defending D-III national champ Trinity will be at Saint Joe’s on Dec. 3, should be a doozy of a nonconference, early season game. Trinity and Wesleyan, who met in the Final Four, will renew their rivalry in Middletown on Jan. 24.

*Eastern Connecticut is in the midst of a $2.7 million project to install field turf on its baseball and softball fields in Willimantic. A total of 172,000 square feet will be laid down for the ECSU programs, which have won 10 national championships since 1981.

*Serious question. If a player with G-League experience can sign to play in college, as London Johnson did in committing to Louisville this week, does that mean that the whole NBA “test the waters” process is now gone? If a player enters the draft, and does not get picked, or offered a big enough contract, can he then go back to college?

*Yale freshman Noah Piper had four field goals and five extra points in a win over Stonehill on Oct. 18. According to program historian Rich Marazzi, it’s a post-1900 school record. In 1883, when field goals counted as five points, Wyllis Terry kicked five in a 98-0 win over Rutgers. We kid you not.

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Last word

The proliferation of gambling-related scandals in major sports, which exploded this week with the indictments of NBA coach Chauncey Billups and player Terry Rozier — and is suspected to be the tip on an iceberg — shouldn’t shock anyone. Once pro leagues crossed a Rubicon and went into business with gambling business, online betting that is very easy to access and very hard to stop, much of the stigma that kept distance between the entities was lost. Throw in these ridiculous and easy-to-fix prop bets, that got a couple of MLB pitchers suspended, and the seeds of catastrophe have long been sown. Invasive thorn bushes are sprouting everywhere now, and who knows when, or how deeply, college sports will be dragged in.