Across the program, Wisconsin athletics have been quite fortunate with incoming recruits.

The football team has had back-to-back Big Ten Freshman of the Year winners with linebacker Chris Borland in 2009 and running back James White in 2010. The men’s basketball team had Josh Gasser start 30 games for the Badgers last year as a freshman, and now the Wisconsin women’s soccer team has Cara Walls.

A true freshman from Wauwatosa, Wis., Walls has already been named Big Ten Freshman of the Week twice this season. The first award followed Week 1 of the season, in which she recorded two goals and had an assist in her first three games. The second weekly award came Sept. 26, after she scored both goals in a 2-1 road win over Michigan State Sept. 23.

Before entering the UW women’s soccer program, Walls was already riding high. On July 21, Walls helped lead FC Milwaukee’s U-18 girls team to a national championship, the first-ever Wisconsin youth soccer team to win a national title. Walls walked away with the Golden Boot as the top scorer in the championship tournament with four goals.

“Preseason, Cara came in with a good attitude, really wanted to compete for a starting spot and she played well and she [earned a starting spot],” junior midfielder Monica Lam-Feist said. “I think just her attitude, even though she’s a freshman, was wanting to come in and make an impact.”

After such a successful prep career, that is exactly what the coaching staff was expecting when Walls entered her first season with the Badgers.

“You never know how a freshman is [going to perform], but my expectations were that she would be contributing,” head coach Paula Wilkins said.

And contributing she is. Apart from Walls’ two Big Ten weekly awards, she also leads the Badgers in goals and points with six and 13, respectively.

“[My success has given me] more confidence, and it makes me just want to keep going now and get some more balls and get some more wins for the team,” Walls said.

It could turn out to be a huge luxury for the Badgers to have Walls stepping into the program with a high degree of success early in her career. Not only does it provide the Badgers two great goal scorers on the front line, it will also hopefully translate to a smoother transition for the offense after senior captain Laurie Nosbusch graduates.

Nosbusch has no doubts that Walls will be able to carry the load.

“I think she is going to be a forward that teams throughout the Big Ten and whoever else we play will always fear her and worry about how they are going to defend her,” Nosbusch said. “I don’t think it is going to take her four years to reach her full potential. I think people should be nervous how great she is going to be by the end of this year.”

Nosbusch humbly denied that she has anything to teach Walls, but Walls insisted that wasn’t the case.

“Watching Laurie, she is obviously really good at what she does. She always works really hard, so she has been a very good role model for me,” Walls said.

As in many cases, success also brings high expectations and more responsibilities. Wall’s potential and her journey to getting to be the type of player that Nosbusch thinks she can be is part of the reason why Wilkins was so eager to win Walls over in the recruiting process against in-state rivals Marquette and UW-Milwaukee.

“I think one of the things is that we saw a little inconsistency when she was younger,” Wilkins said. “[Walls] would be great and I really wanted to work with her because I thought that we could make her more consistent and that she could really flourish in this environment, and I thought that she was going to get better game-to-game and year-to-year.”

Moving forward, it will be up to Cara to improve her game where the coaches think it is necessary, being more physical and having the patience to allow her teammates to join her around the goal so she isn’t trying to score by herself.

“The sky is the limit for her,” Wilkins says. “I think she has the physical ability, I think she has the technical ability. I think the one thing is it’s going to be how hard she wants something. I have seen it in her; I have seen the competitive part, so I am quite excited about it.”