Kodi Lavrusky is not looking to be the center of attention.
“She’s just very quiet like that. … I’ve seen articles that coaches have written say that she might not say two words to you if you didn’t say stuff to her,” said Lavrusky’s father, Charles Lavrusky.
As much as the UCLA sophomore has tried to avoid the spotlight, she can’t help but run right back into it.
In December, during her second season with the UCLA women’s soccer team, Kodi Lavrusky did something that no Bruin women’s soccer player had ever done. In the 97th minute of the 2013 national championship game against Florida State, Lavrusky kicked the game-winning goal to give UCLA its first-ever women’s soccer NCAA title.
But even in that moment, Lavrusky made sure that the national TV cameras didn’t focus solely on her. After scoring the game-winner, she immediately turned around and rushed toward her cheering teammates.
“Even that celebration was just giving everybody a hug. It wasn’t like running and sliding and making a spectacle,” Charles Lavrusky said.
Kodi Lavrusky did run around a little bit after the goal, but not for the sake of self-promotion.
“She didn’t want to get at the bottom of the dogpile at the end, … so that’s why she kind of ran around a little bit more – for survival,” her father said, chuckling.
Instead of basking in the glory of her golden goal after the season was over, Lavrusky had another goal in mind. She remembered about another team that she wanted to help win a national championship. She was eager to make this new dream into a reality.
The transaction
Lavrusky would always kid around with her friends on the UCLA softball team about one day playing on the team.
“We had jokingly talked about me base running for them, because I used to play (softball),” Lavrusky said.
Whether the softball players knew it or not, Lavrusky was serious. She had asked her soccer coach Amanda Cromwell about the opportunity of playing for the softball team months before her game-winning goal.
After the soccer season ended, Cromwell and softball coach Kelly Inouye-Perez crossed paths at a women’s soccer championship celebration. It turned out that Inouye-Perez was in search of a player who could come in and become a pinch runner for the softball team.
Within a week of Cromwell and Inouye-Perez’s discussion, Lavrusky was a member of the softball team. In just over a month, she had gone from championship hero to multisport Division I athlete. For Lavrusky, the decision to play softball wasn’t an attempt to gain fame, but rather an attempt to help out her friends and return to a sport she loves.
“I enjoy every time I’m with the softball team,” Lavrusky said. “I just try to contribute and bring as much energy … as I can.”
Back to where it all started
Before Lavrusky ever touched her foot to a soccer ball, she had a ball and bat in hand.
Her father, who was playing minor league baseball during her childhood, remembers moments when his daughter would try to emulate him. One day, he came home and found a three-year-old Lavrusky working on her pitching command.
“She had put electrical tape on the door heading out into the garage, kind of like a strike zone,” Charles Lavrusky said. “She’d just be throwing the ball up against that door just like she was pitching to it.”
As Kodi Lavrusky grew older, she participated in Little League baseball. Although she was one of the only girls in the league, she managed to make the All-Star team every year she played.
Lavrusky transitioned from baseball to softball around the age of 12, but her interest in the two sports steadily declined as she got older. She became more interested in faster-paced sports, such as soccer. As high school approached, Lavrusky had to make a choice.
“(My parents) got a little sad, because they wanted me to keep playing (softball),” Lavrusky said. “Soccer started to get at a higher level, so that’s when I wanted just to focus on one sport and leave it at that.”
By the time Lavrusky was a senior in high school, she had become one of the highest-rated soccer recruits in the country. She set the career and single-season goal-scoring records for Yucaipa High School, while making the All-California Interscholastic Federation team all four years.
How did Lavrusky celebrate?
By playing yet another sport.
From one goal to another
Lavrusky developed a love for basketball in her middle school years. In her first three years of high school, she suppressed this love, because soccer season was in direct conflict with the basketball season. But by her senior year, Lavrusky couldn’t settle for one sport any longer. In spite of the seasonal conflict, she decided to play both soccer and basketball during the same season, leading to some busy evenings.
“She would play soccer, and then at 5 o’clock when the game was over, we would put her in the car and we’d rush her over to another high school to have a basketball game,” Charles Lavrusky said.
The two-sport phenomenon became fodder for local news outlets. From one game to another, cameras and reporters would follow Kodi Lavrusky. By the time the winter sports season was over, she had been granted all-league accolades in both soccer and basketball.
Although the cameras were there, Lavrusky was hardly posing for them.
“(After one of Kodi’s games), a couple of the girls … were talking about Kodi,” Charles Lavrusky said. “I heard them say, ‘Man, I can’t believe that she can score three or four goals (in a game) like that, and it doesn’t even go to her head. It’s like she didn’t score any goals.’”
Déjà vu
Just two years after Kodi Lavrusky’s wild two-sport season at Yucaipa High School, she finds herself a member of two sports teams at UCLA. Although the soccer and softball seasons do not conflict directly, there have been times when she’s had to choose one over the other, such as in March, when the soccer team took a trip to Japan to play in a couple of off-season exhibition games.
As usual, soccer took precedence.
“Soccer is probably the biggest thing,” Lavrusky said.
While soccer might still be Lavrusky’s primary concern, she is not shortchanging any of her softball teammates when she is on the diamond.
“To just add somebody in, it would have to be a special type of person that could add to the culture versus possibly a distraction,” Inouye-Perez said. “She understands that, … she understands the commitment to team first. … The girls absolutely mesh with her.”
Lavrusky has yet to swing the bat for UCLA this season, but she has contributed as a pinch runner, scoring four runs and stealing a base in her 11 games played thus far. More than anything, it is Lavrusky’s championship pedigree, steady temperament and dynamic athletic ability that bring insight and inspiration to the No. 3 UCLA softball team, which is looking to capture a national championship of its own right.
“She brings a lot of just passion and hard work for what she does,” said junior pitcher Ally Carda. “Just watching her play soccer also influences us on the softball field. … It’s pretty cool to watch.”
People may be watching, but Lavrusky is just looking to play.