ORLANDO – The UCF women’s soccer team is off to a solid start to the 2024 season. The Knights have only a pair of losses on the season, just one setback in Big 12 Conference play and currently boast one of the top-scoring offenses in the entire country.
Leading the way for the Black and Gold is senior Chloe Netzel. This season, Netzel has blossomed into one of the best players in Division I soccer. This can be seen on the stat sheet. Netzel is tied for the fifth most goals in the country with eight, is tied for the second-best goals per game with a 1.00 average, is second in shots on goal per game with a 3.00 average, is fourth in shots per game with a 5.13 average and tied for 10th for most points with 17. She has also recorded three multi-goal games this season, one game away from tying the school record.
Netzel is currently in a position many soccer players could only dream of being in. But when you look at the journey she’s taken to this point, it’s quite clear why she is where she is. For Netzel, soccer was a constant in a childhood of constant change.
Netzel says she lived in seven different cities. Those cities were Buffalo, New York, Frederick, Maryland, St. Charles, Illinois, Cincinnati, Ohio, Arlington Heights Illinois, St. Louis Missouri and Orlando. She says the amount of time she lived in one place at a time was five years.
The reason Netzel had to move around a lot was due to her mother Lisa moving up the corporate ladder in the food and grocery industry, having worked for serval big companies including Aldi. Constantly having to move was something Netzel said was really difficult for her.
“As a kid, switching schools, finding a new team, it's definitely hard to adjust.” Netzel said.
Netzel said she was first introduced to soccer when she was four years old after her dad Fred, who eventually became her first coach, signed her up to play. And though she admits to not initially be happy with her dad’s decision, she said it didn’t take long for her to fall in love with the sport.
“I was reluctant,” Netzel said. “The first session I was like ‘Oh I can’t believe he’s making me do this! What is soccer?’ I think I was more just nervous because I was a kid, so it was my first time being forced to do something. But then after the first time, I was like ‘When’s the next one?’”
Chloe Netzel and her father Fred.
Netzel said that she started playing rec soccer, but she then started to get “real” training when her family moved to Illinois. This trend would continue as no matter where she moved to, soccer came with her. Netzel said soccer helped her deal with the constant moves as it helped her form important friendships.
“All my friends are soccer friends,” Netzel said. “You just create those better relationships because you guys go through traveling and team stuff together.”
Netzel said that soccer was one of two constants in her life. The other constant was her family. Coincidently, the latter is also what helped her become such a good soccer player.
Netzel’s younger brother Gavin is also a soccer player. He is currently a freshman member of the University of North Carolina’s men’s team. Netzel said the way they both play soccer was influenced by each other.
“Growing up with him, playing soccer, I was defiantly a little bit bossy,” Netzel said “I wanted to be the forward. I was like ‘You can defend me.’ And he’s a center-back now. Growing up it was very easy for us two to go do something because he wanted to work on defending and I wanted to work on attacking.”
Chloe Netzel and her brother Gavin.
Netzel described her brother as not just someone she’s really “proud of,” but as someone who has helped her and made her better. She says they talk nearly every day, and she feels like she can go to him because he’s also a college soccer player, he has gone through many of the same things she has.
This past offseason, Netzel chose to spend the entire season training alongside her brother, instead of joining a summer league team like she usually did. This was because she was coming home from UCF and Gavin had just moved to a new city after graduating high school. Her brother said the decision to train together was done because their circumstances made things feel like how they were when they were kids.
“I had moved to Chicago right after graduation,” Gavin said. “Chloe was coming back from college at the time. We were both in a new environment. So basically, just like in the past, when we moved, we pretty much just had each other and relied on each other.”
