Wisconsin women’s soccer player Cara Walls has a knack for standing out against older competition–not just in her collegiate career as an underclassmen, but at the prep level too.

Starting in eight grade, she began practicing with Wauwatosa East’s varsity team, her future squad, in a very rare occurrence for prep sports. It was here, practicing and holding her own against players sometimes four years older than herself, that Walls’ understood she had some serious talent.

“I realized, ‘oh, I am playing with these girls who are older and better and I’m doing well,'” Walls said. “That is what made me realize I wanted to be really good.”

Walls might have had another unfair training advantage growing up. Her older brother Tony, who she often played against, is a professional soccer player for the Chicago Fire in the MLS.

Even though they aren’t passing back and forth in the backyard anymore, Cara says seeing Tony succeed helped motivate her to improve as she grew up.

“Seeing him be successful made me want to be better,” Walls said.

After spending her first two years in high school playing for only her club team, Walls saw success come in spades during her prep career. As a senior for Wauwatosa East in 2011, Walls was named conference player of the year, team MVP and first team all-area.

She also helped lead her club team, FC Milwaukee, to a U18 national title and was given an award for being the championship’s leading scorer.

Freshman McKenna Meuer, her high school club teammate and current Wisconsin teammate, says one thing that hasn’t changed about Walls, who she called “one of our best forwards that creates so many opportunities for us,” during the years is the fact that she understands what it takes to succeed.

“One of the best things about playing with Cara is knowing that you have a dominant forward who always wants the ball and is just always in the right place at the right time,” Meuer said. “That is something that is really important for a forward, which is what allows her to score so many goals.”

That right place, right time instinct has lead Walls to widespread success during her underclassmen years with the Badgers.

As a freshman in 2011, Walls led the team in goals scored, netting nine – the most by a first-year Wisconsin player since 1997 – on her way to becoming the first freshman since 2001 to lead UW in that category. Walls also had a knack for scoring in the clutch, leading the team with four game-winning goals. For her efforts, the young forward was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team and named the conference’s freshman of the week three separate times.

And forget a sophomore slump. Walls followed her fantastic freshman year with an even better one in 2012, scoring 10 goals and 21 points, leading her team in both categories. Named Wisconsin’s Offensive Player of the Year, Walls continued her knack for clutch scores with three game-winners and three multi-goal games. She also created more opportunities than when she had as a freshman, recording 26 shots on goal compared to her 19 in the previous season.

Now entering her junior year of eligibility, Walls is growing as a leader during the team’s spring scrimmages, Wisconsin head coach Paula Wilkins said.

“She is becoming more of a leader, but she is not what people thing of when you think of a typical leader, yelling and cheering,” Wilkins said. “She is someone who feels responsible for creating opportunities for the team and has an impact on the team.”

And with next year’s squad likely to be a young one, it’s a necessary transition for one of the team’s most proven players. As the team says goodbye to numerous seniors, new shoes need to be filled, and Walls is looking to fill some of those.

With both a “natural knack and technical ability that makes her more and more challenging to defend” according to Wilkins, Walls could be the key to seeing if the Wisconsin team will be able to improve in 2013 after losing in the NCAA tournament’s first round to No. 3-seeded UCLA. 

“Next year she is going to be one of our most dynamic and most effective players,” Meuer said. “The fact that she is going to be a leader is only going to benefit our team.”