ROSEMONT, Ill. – Penn State women’s soccer redshirt sophomore goalkeeper Mackenzie Gress secured the first Big Ten Conference weekly accolade of her collegiate career, earning the league’s Goalkeeper of the Week award following the conference’s release Tuesday afternoon.
Gress made her third and fourth starts of the 2024 campaign last week against Maryland and Minnesota, with the Lyndhurst, New Jersey, native shot-stopper picking up a pair of individual victories to rise to 3-0-1 overall in her first year as a routine starter. Gress earned her first career solo shutout in the dominant 5-0 performance against the Terrapins on the road, her first collegiate road start. In Sunday’s victory against the Golden Gophers, Gress faced a career-high 11 shots and recorded a career-high six saves while managing to guide Penn State through a shutout second half of work en route to her fourth consecutive unbeaten decision.
Penn State’s goalkeeper spent the majority of the regular season with the United States U-20 Women’s Youth National Team at the 2024 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Colombia, missing the middle 12 matches of the season while handling her international commitments. Gress has impressed since making her return to the Nittany Lion XI, going individually unbeaten in her first four starts of the season for a 3-0-1 record overall. Gress maintains a 0.78 goals-against average with just three goals allowed against 13 saves. Her first career clean sheet against Maryland is paired with a season-long 0.813 save percentage through her first four opportunities in 2024.
The nationally recognized shot-stopper becomes the first Nittany Lion to win Big Ten Goalkeeper of the Week accolades since Katherine Asman picked up those laurels a trio of times in the 2023 fall campaign. Asman was a two-time standalone B1G Goalkeeper of the Week last season with one selection as a Big Ten Co-Goalkeeper of the Week. Gress becomes the first Penn State goalkeeper other than Asman to win a B1G weekly honor since Britt Eckerstrom landed those accolades in the Nittany Lions’ 2015 National Championship campaign.
Gress becomes the third Penn Stater to pick up individual Big Ten weekly honors over the course of the 2024 campaign, joining redshirt senior forward Kaitlyn MacBean and senior defender Mieke Schiemann. Both MacBean and Schiemann garnered national attention a week ago, earning the No. 4 and No. 50 rankings in the TopDrawerSoccer Midseason Top 100 player rankings following the organizations’ release a week ago. Gress, MacBean and Schiemann have combined for a trio of B1G weekly accolades overall, marking the fifth year in a row Penn State has landed at least three B1G weekly honors in a single season.
Gress and the No. 20 Nittany Lion women’s soccer team prepares for the home stretch of the 2024 Big Ten Conference regular season, with Penn State heading west to the City of Angels to face off against UCLA and USC later this week. Penn State challenges the Bruins at Wallis Annenberg Stadium on Thursday, October 17, with kickoff slated for 10:30 p.m. (ET) on the Big Ten Network. Then, PSU travels down the road to Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, the home of Major League Soccer’s LA Galaxy, to battle the Trojans in a 3 p.m. (ET) start on B1G+.
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