No freshman girls’ soccer player in any class in Missouri has ever scored more goals than Logan-Rogersville’s Maddie Lou Shuburte did last year when she tallied 77.
And when you add in assists, only two players at any grade in any class have more total points than who? Maddie Lou that’s who. The Wildcats didn’t have to wait for her to make that impact. Because she didn’t wait to start preparing for this stage. “I just kind of started playing in pre-school,” said Maddie Lou, a sophomore on the team. “Two, three years old. I just kind of ran with it. I had that mentality, ‘OK let’s put the ball in the back of the net. Let’s get going.'”
Before she could score the sixth most goals of any player of any grade in the state, before she could tie the school record of most goals in a game with seven, and before she set the Wildcat record for hat tricks in a single season with 13, soccer was already life. “Going into my freshman year I was like, ‘Ok, let’s set these goals for year after year after year,” Maddie Lou said. “‘What Can I do?’I went into my freshman year knowing I was like, ‘OK, my goal for this year is to make it to State.'”
Mission accomplished. The Wildcats also won 20 games for the first time in program history en route to their first Final Four. Now as a sophomore she’s already celebrated the 100 goal milestone with her teammates and sits six goals shy of the school’s all-time mark of 133. “She’s great to have up front because you know anything is possible,” said Brett Wubbena, Logan-Rogersville’s head coach. “You know she could get three in a minute.”
That came in handy in the state quarterfinal game. The Wildcats were less than eight minutes away from a 1-0 season ending loss. Six and a half minutes and two Maddie Lou goals later, the Wildcats celebrated a 2-1 win and their second state semifinal trip in a row.
“She’s easy to coach,” Wubbena said. “I mean, it’s frustrating whenever you’re trying to do this and that and they keep putting two or three people on you.”
The team and individual success is special to Maddie Lou and she hopes it helps her prepare for the second half of her high school career and beyond. “It means so much to me,” Maddie Lou said. “I have a giant milestone to make it Division I.”
But first, a chance to do one more thing that hasn’t been done here. Win a state title.
