Hat tricks in soccer are the equivalent of a no-hitter in baseball or a triple-double in basketball. They aren't exceedingly rare, but when they do happen, they make the casual sports fan take notice.
Consecutive hat tricks, or no-hitters or triple-doubles, are rarer still and more of a statistical oddity. Consider Mia Hamm, recognized by some to be the greatest female soccer player of all-time. She posted 10 hat tricks in international competition in her career, but only two of them were back-to-back.
MaxPreps has compiled a national high school girls soccer record book and consecutive hat tricks is where we start our journey into recognizing the greatest feats in the history of the sport.
Based on research into statistics submitted to MaxPreps, the national record for consecutive hat tricks is 22. That is not a misprint. Twenty-two.
Ellie Garrison of
Wheatmore (Trinity, N.C.) put together an incredible season in the spring of 2023 when she led the nation with 96 goals. After finishing her sophomore year of 2022 with four goals in the final game of the season, Garrison opened her junior season with 21 straight games with at least three goals. For the season, she never scored less than two goals in 24 matches.
Ellie Garrison not only piled up 77 goals as a sophomore in 2021, she also led Wheatmore to the Class 2A state championship in North Carolina. (PHOTO: Matthew Plyler)
According to Wheatmore coach Rick Maness, the incredible feat didn't register with the team. It was just a case of Ellie doing her thing.
"We didn't even realize it during the season," said Maness, who led the Warriors to a state championship in 2022 and 49 straight wins over two seasons. "But I call her my 'Mia Hamm' because of the way she plays the game. So it's not surprising."
Garrison broke the state record for goals scored during the 2023 season – her own record of 77 that she broke as a sophomore. She scored 75 as a senior (to go with 29 as a freshman) to give her a state record 277 goals in her career.
If not for a shutout loss in the first game of the 2016 season,
Lauren Bouvia of
Weiser (Idaho) would have held the consecutive hat tricks record with an incredible 35 in a row.
Bouvia finished a record-breaking 2015 fall campaign with 17
straight games with a hat trick. During that season she broke the national
record (since broken) with 127 goals during a 20-1 Class 3A state
championship season for the Wolverines.
She began her senior season with the shutout loss but then had 18 straight games with a hat trick before scoring a single goal in the final two games of her career. She finished the year with 98 goals and her career with 311.
During the 2015 streak, Bouvia had a run of 16 straight games with at least four goals, 14 consecutive games with at least five goals, 10 straight games with six goals and three straight games with at least eight goals.
"Prior to my junior year, I started with the intention that I wanted to work on my shots from different ranges," Bouvia said in an e-mail to MaxPreps. "That led to me scoring a high number of goals during my junior and senior year."
The hat trick prowess of Garrison and Bouvia highlight the new record book which includes single game, single season and career records for assists, goals, saves and shutouts. Coaching records are also included with an attempt to include all coaches in the nation with over 400 career wins.
The record book includes achievements at the varsity level and includes statistics for players who may have played at the varsity level while still in junior high school (below ninth grade).
Sources for the record book include the National Federation of High Schools record book, longtime soccer historian Sheldon Shealer, state association record books, the Cal-Hi Sports Record Book & Almanac by Mark Tennis and Nelson Tennis and MaxPreps leaderboards and database.
Some of the highlights from the record book:
* Carlos Giron of
St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) is the all-time leader in career coaching wins for girls soccer with 842 during a 39-year career. He had a winning percentage of .892 (842-88-31). He is nearly 100 wins ahead of the No. 2 coach on the list.
* Jennifer Brelage of
Bardstown (Ky.) broke the record for goals in a single game when she netted 18 in a 21-0 win over Campbellsville in 2002. According to a report in the Courier-Journal, Campbellsville did not field a full team of 11 players in the game. Ironically, Bardstown was only 7-10 on the season and only scored 40 goals in its other 16 games combined with a previous high of seven.
*
Lee Ducharme of
P.K. Yonge (Gainesville, Fla.), who played seven years of
varsity soccer, has the all-time career goals mark with 369. The middle school she attended was on the same site as the high school, allowing her to start playing varsity soccer in sixth grade.
*
Kasi Ginther of
Summit Christian Academy (Lee's Summit, Mo.) holds the national record with
130 goals in a single season in the spring of 2017. She also set a record with 22 hat tricks during the season, however the most consecutive hat tricks she had was eight. She also holds the record for career hat tricks with 59.
*Kelly Berkemeier of
St. Mary's (Stockton, Calif.) broke the record for shutouts in a season with 32 in 1999. The Rams won the Sac-Joaquin Section championship with a record of 31-1-2 and Berkemeier did not allow a goal during the entire season.
