Georgetown University women’s soccer (12-3-4, 8-1-1 Big East) claimed its third consecutive Big East regular season championship Oct. 31 after an extremely impressive season. Among many talented players, junior goalkeeper Cara Martin has been crucial to their success.
This season, her third with the Hoyas, Martin was awarded the highest goalkeeper honor of the conference as she was named the 2024 Big East goalkeeper of the year and selected to the all-Big East first team.
Martin’s journey to the Hilltop began at 4 years old when she started playing soccer with her older brother and his team at practice. She was drawn to the goalkeeper position, committing to it fully by eighth grade.
“I got more joy out of stopping someone else from scoring than scoring myself,” Martin told The Hoya.
Growing up just 15 minutes from Georgetown in Alexandria, Va., Martin attended Alexandria City High School and said Georgetown was her top choice from the beginning of her recruiting process.
“None of the other schools I looked at even compared to Georgetown, either academically or athletically,” Martin said. “And I kind of just knew I wanted to play here and I wanted to be near my parents so that they could come watch me.”
While goalkeepers usually do not see much action as first-years, an injury to then-senior goalkeeper Allie Augur placed Martin in an unusual situation. As a rookie, Martin started for the Hoyas in the first regular season game of 2022 and ultimately played in 10 games total, starting in all of them. Impressively, she recorded clean sheets in six of those games and earned a Big East goalkeeper of the week selection.
However, as a sophomore, Martin played just three games. She made nine saves and allowed four goals. Martin described the experience as an opportunity to mentally reset.
“My freshman year, I was thrown into it, and that wasn’t normal, especially not for a goalkeeper,” she said. “So, my sophomore year made it so that this year I was able to approach the season in a much more positive way and come in with a better mindset.”
Martin has appeared in 19 games this season, starting in 18. Though playing significantly more minutes than in her previous two seasons, she has conceded fewer goals than in her first two years, allowing just three over 945 minutes.
Martin recorded 19 saves, giving her a goals-against average of .286, cutting her first-year season average of .60 in half for the second-best in the NCAA. She also currently boasts a save percentage of 0.864, which ranks seventh in the nation. She leads the Big East in both goals against average and save percentage.
She credits this exceptional performance to her shift in mentality, along with the improvements made with the support of her coaches, who were named the 2024 Big East coaching staff of the year.
“I’ve completely reworked my mindset, but honestly, the coaching staff is just, they’ve improved my goalkeeping ability so much that I feel like I’ve become a much cleaner goalkeeper,” Martin said. “They’ve kind of instilled a lot of confidence in me, especially Cam Fertenbaugh — he’s my goalkeeper coach. He’s been very good at coaching me through things and like understanding how I work as a player to get the most out of me, and that has been really beneficial for both me and hopefully the team.”
Martin and the Hoyas — seeded sixth — will make their 13th-consecutive appearance in the NCAA tournament Nov. 16 at 12 p.m. on Shaw Field, where they will face Fairfield (18-2-1, 10-1-1 Metro Atlantic Athletic).
Last year, Georgetown’s season ended in the second round of the tournament, falling to St. Louis after defeating Old Dominion in the first round. This year, they hope to go further.
“I’m very excited. I know our team’s very excited,” Martin said. “We think we can do well this year, and we kind of want to set a higher standard, so hopefully we get through Fairfield, and then we’ll see where we go from there. But I know everyone’s really looking forward to it and we’re going to try our best.”
