Soccer, Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Julie Ertz
Favorite team: Philly Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: When I scored my first varsity goal as a freshman against one of our rival schools on their senior night.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: In a game, I whiffed the ball trying to cross it in and fell on my butt. So I just sat crisscross on the ground as my sideline and I laughed about it.
Music on my playlist: Kid Laroi, Taylor Swift, Lil Uzi Vert, and many random others.
Future plans: I plan to attend college next year, majoring in Environmental Engineering.
Words to live by: “After all, life goes on”
One goal before turning 30: To travel to at least 20 different countries.
One thing people don’t know about me: I had lunch with Lady Gaga.
By Mary Jane Souder
Every team needs a Lily Crocker.
A selfless player who will do whatever is needed for the good of her team.
The Cheltenham senior’s natural position is on the outside wing, but she willingly moved to center mid since it benefitted her team.
“It’s a lot different,” Crocker said. “It’s a bit more of a foot skills position. You have to read the field more, and it’s a bit more defensive, so it was a hard switch, and it was really unexpected because I used to hate center mid.
“I started playing there because when the games turn defensive, which a lot of ours do, it’s hard for outside mids to really do a lot because a lot of their job is making runs and making crosses, so I moved to center mid to be more into the game and more helpful basically.”
Granted, that might not be especially noteworthy since players routinely give up their position of choice for the good of the team, but Crocker did much more than that, moving into goal recently when the Panthers found themselves in dire straits.
“I volunteered when not just our first string but our second string goalies were both out for the season very unexpectedly,” Crocker said. “Our first string goalie, who is a junior, is very, very good, and she was out very early in the season, so our sophomore second string has been playing.
“I was actually so insanely proud of her – she’s grown so much, and she’s really been there for our team, and then she, of course, broke her finger because what else would someone on our team do, so we were left goalie-less.
“We do have a third string goalie, but she’s a sophomore and doesn’t really play goalie, so we were really struggling for a game. I had talked to our coach, and I’m like, ‘I used to play goalie for a travel team a while ago’, and I knew that I had a mindset that could work, and I’m overall athletic enough to be there.”
So, into net Crocker went although she made a deal with coach Leah Matusow to play just one half and the other would play her field position.
“The first game went really good, the second game went horribly for a lot of reasons,” said Crocker, who had not played the position in six or seven years.
The second game included some extenuating circumstances, not the least of which kept her in goal the entire game.
“I started in goal the first half, and another girl who offered was supposed to split the game with me and go in the second half, and she got red carded out of the game the first half,” Crocker said. “The game was not super close – it was 3-0 at halftime. I went right up to my mom and said, ‘Mom should I go in goal? I don’t know what to do.’ She said, ‘The game would be 6-0 if it was anybody else.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ so I talked to Matusow.
“She was like, ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to.’ She said, ‘We basically don’t have another option,’ So I was like, ‘Okay,’ but I was kind of miserable that game. Afterwards, I talked to her and I said, ‘Look, I’ll play a half of goal for the remainder of the season, but I only have four games left, and I don’t want to leave my field position for the rest of my competitive soccer career.’ So, she totally understood that.
“The other thing that’s hard – with the amount of injuries we have, one of our captains was saying that it’s hard for me to not be in the field at the same time as she is. Same with the other girl I’m supposed to be splitting halves with – if she’s in goal, she’s our leading goal scorer. Obviously, we can’t win if we’re letting six goals scored on us, but we can’t win if we’re not scoring any goals, so it really puts us in a tough position. We’re trying to figure it out.”
For obvious reasons, Matusow does not take Crocker for granted.
“She’s played four years. I’ve coached her for three and also in middle school before I moved to the high school,” the Lady Panthers’ coach said. “She is someone who’s so passionate about her team and putting the team first.
“We’ve had a lot of injuries to our goalkeepers, and she said, ‘Coach, if you need me to play goalie, I will.’ I think she’s had a little bit of fun even though it hasn’t always necessarily gone her way, but it just shows you the kind of kid she is that she’s literally willing to do whatever our team needs. She’s just someone that loves being part of the Cheltenham girls’ soccer team, which makes it fun to be her coach.”
An unusual journey
Crocker has been playing soccer for as long as she can remember, getting her start in intramurals when she was three or four years old.
“I immediately loved it, and I stuck with it,” she said. “I started playing on a travel team as soon as I could, and I played with all my friends and really loved it.”
Crocker’s high school journey took a hit when – in the fall of 2020 after COVID 19 had cancelled all spring sports, Cheltenham did not compete in fall sports and instead competed in the United X League the following spring.
“That year was really hard, especially the fall because we didn’t have a season,” Crocker said. “We were cleared to have some outside practices, but we were practicing knowing we wouldn’t be allowed to play, so it wasn’t super exciting.
“It was hard not to have soccer. We didn’t have a football season, and we weren’t in school. We were online completely. The school did stuff to have us be a community still, but we were definitely very separated from each other, and that definitely impacted our return in the spring season too.”
The positive in that whole experience was capturing the United X championship that spring.
“It was actually one of my favorite memories from soccer ever,” Crocker said. “There were only five or six teams, not including us, in the league, so we played everybody twice.
“Reading was our most competitive game, and we lost by one on their home field the first time we played them.”
In a rematch just days later at Cheltenham, the Lady Panthers won a nail biter.
“We played them on our Senior Night, and we ended up winning,” Crocker said. “That first game at Reading was our only loss that season.”
The two teams were tied for the top spot in the league at the end of the regular season, but Reading won the tiebreaker and hosted the championship game – a 3-1 Cheltenham win.
“I still remember the feeling when we crashed the field when the buzzer went off,” Crocker said. “I was a sophomore and I started that game, so it was just a really good feeling to feel like we’re in the championship game, this big game, and I’m making a difference. It was really fun.
“I remember we were pulling off 309 by our school, and all of a sudden, these fire trucks came by, and we had a fire truck escort. One of the parents had set it up. We had the fire trucks basically stopping traffic as we were pulling into our school. It was a really cool experience and super fun.”
Last fall, Crocker’s junior season, the Panthers won five games. This year was a difficult season that included a rash of injuries, and the Panthers did not win a game, tying one.
“It was something that none of us expected,” Crocker said. “One of my best friends on the team, a junior, was the first person to get injured. She tore her ACL in our third game, and that was just immediately devastating to us, and that just continued throughout the entire season.
“It has never been easy. We have girls playing that this is their first year playing (high school) soccer. Some of them have never played it ever. It’s hard especially since it’s my senior season. I’ll probably play club in college, but I’m not playing for a college, so to have it be like this, it’s hard, but the most you can do is make the most of it.”
Crocker is one of four captains this fall.
“She was a clear vote for captain this year,” Matusow said. “I think our players will say she is always someone they feel they can go and talk with. She’s always one to check in on everyone.
“In the offseason, she’s like, ‘Hey coach, what can we do?’ She’s a kind human who I think has impressed a lot of people with her leadership and the way she has stepped up. She’s not afraid to voice her thoughts – ‘Hey coach, did you think about this?’ or ‘Hey, we have some suggestions for practice.’ You want that. You want kids that truly want to dive in and make our team better in any way that they can. I really think Lily embodies that. She’s scored a couple of goals this season. I’ve just seen her really raise her level of play because that’s what our team needed.”
In the spring, Crocker is a member of the lacrosse team where her coach echoes a similar sentiment.
“Lily is an absolute pleasure to have on the team,” Panthers’ lacrosse coach Marina Schreiner said. “She’s an asset and plays wherever I need her. I’ll be like – Hey, can you go out on defense? Can you go on offense? Whatever I need, she’s there.
“She’s a good leader on the team and really leads the younger girls. She’s very genuine and authentic person as well. She’s a great team player. I would love to have a lot of Lilys on my team.”
Academics a top priority
While Crocker’s soccer journey has been non-traditional, so has her high school experience. Crocker – like all students – lost the spring of her freshman year to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her sophomore year included the loss of a fall sports season and virtual school the entire year.
“Last year was our first full year,” Crocker said. “At the end of our junior year, experiencing some of these high school things for the first time was a really weird experience.
“Since we never had an end of the year, we never had it only be the three other grades. I remember school feeling empty and the parking lot feeling empty because the seniors weren’t there. Freshman and sophomore year, our last day of school, we closed a computer, so it was a very different end-of-school-year experience. This was way more fun. It was easy to work up until the last day of virtual school because there was nothing else we could do versus in person – we had a lot more fun at the end of the year.”
A member of the National Honor Society, Crocker is an excellent student and takes a course load of honors and AP classes.
“I really value my academics,” she said.
As for her future, Crocker has not chosen a college but plans to major in environmental engineering.
“I took our AP environmental course last year, and one of the things I really loved was the different ways to increase energy efficiency and the water problems,” she said. “I’m really a math-oriented person, so I knew I wanted to do something challenging in that aspect, so that’s why I settled on engineering.”
As for soccer, Crocker got her wish, closing out her final high school season playing no more than one half in goal and the other half on the field.
“These were my last couple of games playing for Cheltenham, so to miss out on field time is what was most upsetting to me,” she said.
Will she someday look back and laugh?
“Oh totally, we already kind of laugh about it because there’s nothing else you can do,” Crocker said.
Matusow will have a hard time replacing Crocker for more than just the skills she brought to the soccer field.
“She’s been a great role model, in my opinion, for our younger players,” the Panthers’ coach said. “Especially in a season we’ve had a lot of people go down, and that means a lot of people have had to step up.
“There have been a few practices where I’ve asked my captains to really step up, and to watch Lily play that player-coach role has been really cool.
“She’s a good student, and that’s something we take pride in. She’s got school spirit, and she works really hard. She’s just a great kid.”
