COLBERT, WA – For five years, Northwest Christian senior Claire Wichman has been finding ways to score.
On Tuesday night, she reached a milestone no other girls soccer player in Washington has reached before.
Wichman scored twice as the Crusaders improved to 11-0, with her second goal of the night giving her 200 for her high school career.
The milestone came two minutes before halftime.
“It was definitely super difficult, especially when I’m feeling like a lot of pressure to, like, ‘One more, one more,’” Wichman said. “And I’m like, ‘Man, why can I not get one more?’”
The pressure was something Wichman hadn’t experienced much before.
“I’ve played them before. I haven’t been man marked or anything, so this is definitely new,” she said.
But even with defenders focused on stopping her, Wichman found a way through.
Northwest Christian coach Steve Del Pizzo said the attention Wichman receives from opposing defenses has become a testament to how dangerous she is.
“It’s so cool having a player that demands that much attention from the other team,” Del Pizzo said. “I think at one point she had five players marking her and still managed to get two goals. She works really, really hard at her craft.”
Wichman began her varsity career as an eighth grader and immediately established herself as one of the state’s most prolific scorers.
She scored 28 goals that season, followed by 42 as a freshman, 48 as a sophomore and 49 as a junior.
She entered Tuesday with 32 goals this season and remains one of the state’s top scorers.
For Del Pizzo, who has coached for 14 seasons, putting Wichman’s accomplishment into perspective is difficult.
“I can’t even comprehend scoring 200,” he said. “200 goals after 14 seasons. It’s fantastic.”
What makes Wichman so effective, Del Pizzo said, goes beyond what shows up in the box score.
“One of the best for sure,” Del Pizzo said when asked where Wichman ranks among the players he has coached and watched. “It’s internal. It’s innate. It’s something that she sees that other people don’t see. She finds the goals with others, though, which is really cool.”
Wichman said she didn’t know until recently that 200 career goals would put her in such exclusive company.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “I seriously didn’t even know about it until, like, a few weeks ago, so that’s really cool.”
The accomplishment is another milestone in a career that Wichman said she never imagined when she first started playing varsity soccer.
She scored 28 goals as an eighth grader, but had no idea that number would eventually turn into 200.
“Not really,” Wichman said when asked if she could have imagined reaching the milestone. “I had 28 my eighth-grade year, and so I had no idea.”
Now, with the record in the books, Wichman isn’t slowing down.
Her advice to her eighth-grade self is the same approach she continues to take today.
“Just keep going,” she said. “Like, it’s going to be hard, but keep shooting is my main thing. Just as much as you get down, well, just keep going.”
While the milestone belongs to Wichman, she repeatedly credited her teammates and coaches for helping her get there.
“Everyone is seriously, like, the most supportive people I’ve ever met,” she said. “Every single person on this team is rooting for each other, and we all just love each other.”
The Crusaders have built that chemistry into an 11-0 start, and Wichman believes the team has something special.
She said the program feels less like a traditional soccer team and more like a family.
“I have such amazing coaches,” Wichman said. “I love and look up to them, and same with all my teammates.”
Del Pizzo said the team-first mentality is part of what makes this group special.
“We play for each other,” he said. “Even though we have a player, we have a lot of other players on the team that contribute, which is really cool.”
Wichman now has 200 career goals and plenty of season left to add to the total.
But the number that will stand out most is already in the history books.
Two hundred goals.
No Washington girls soccer player had done it before Claire Wichman.
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