Milwaukee City Wire

The Milwaukee Athletics Department has released the latest episode of its podcast, "PounceCast," available starting today. The podcast aims to provide in-depth stories from within the Milwaukee Panther Athletics community and is hosted by Matt Menzl.

This episode features Kayla Rollins, a standout student-athlete from the Milwaukee women's soccer team. Rollins was recognized as the 2024 Horizon League Offensive Player of the Year and was named to the Top Drawer Soccer Third Team Best XI All-American in December. She became the first Panther to achieve All-American status since Elaina LaMacchia in 2021 and is only the seventh in program history.

Rollins ended her career at Milwaukee with remarkable achievements, including scoring 18 goals in a single season, which is a record for over a decade within the program. Her performance included 12 goals in her last eight games, finishing just two goals shy of the NCAA leader's total of 20. Throughout her season, she amassed 39 points from those goals along with three assists, totaling 70 shot attempts with 33 on target and seven game-winning goals.

Her accolades include being named a United Soccer Coaches All-Region honoree and leading her conference with 39 points, significantly ahead of her closest competitor who had 22 points. Nationally, she ranked third for game-winning goals and fourth for goals per game. In league-only matches, she led across several categories including total shots and game-winning goals.

The podcast initiative began in January 2023 as a monthly feature aimed at highlighting various members of Milwaukee Athletics. Previous episodes have featured other notable figures such as Kris Keldmernan, Kyle Rechlicz, Susie Johnson, Bart Lundy, Andrew Basler among others.