Kennesaw State’s soccer team is enjoying their best season in a dozen years and many different players have played a role in that success. The guardian on the team keeping opponents from scoring is goalkeeper Tiffany Sornpao, a redshirt sophomore from Berkeley Lake, Georgia.
Sornpao has been a model of consistency for the Owls, racking up saves and securing leads against tough opponents such as UGA and Georgia Southern. With all of her success, it may come as a surprise that Sornpao stands at just 67 inches tall.
Goalkeepers in soccer usually have one common characteristic — height. According to sportsrec.com, the average male goalkeeper’s height in the United States is 6 feet 2 inches while both of the U.S. Women’s National team goalkeepers are 5 feet 9 inches tall. What may seem like a small difference can be enormous in a position where height is valued over most other attributes.
“One of the biggest things that makes me a good keeper is that I’m shorter,” Sornpao said. “I’ve had to work harder on jumping higher, extending farther and getting faster.”
Not only does the finance major make up for this difference with her training, but she also makes up for it on the field as she vies to break the KSU all-time clean sheet record.
Clean sheets occur when a goalkeeper shuts out the opposing team from scoring during a match. Sornpao has a total of 15 in her career, the third-most in program history. At the rate she is going, Sornpao has a chance to surpass Jessica Marek’s school record of 37 before she graduates.
“It’s actually my biggest goal, having shutouts, because obviously keeping the ball out of the net is my job,” Sornpao said. “Just knowing that I’m able to do my job for my team by keeping it zero on our end is my biggest accomplishment.”
Sornpao’s work ethic has allowed her to overcome her height disadvantage and become one of the most successful goalkeepers in KSU history. That work ethic was instilled in her from an early age.
Growing up, Sornpao’s mom did not allow her to participate in any of the larger travel clubs because they were too expensive. With smaller clubs and high schools not getting scouted as much, Sornpao had to work even harder to get noticed.
“When I was in high school, a sophomore, I actually got invited to a national training camp, so by then my mom was telling me, ‘you don’t need to go in this direction and pay all this money if you already have the talent,'” Sornpao said. “People will see that without you having to throw money at them.”
With her mother’s advice, she continued to work hard and was eventually noticed by former KSU goalkeeper coach Matt Carr, with whom she had a link.
“I actually had kind of a personal connection [with KSU] because one of my teammates was a sister of one of the old assistant coaches who worked here, so he was around all of the time and watched us play,” Sornpao said. “He started recruiting that way and just started feeding the head coach a lot of information about me.”
Sornpao eventually committed to KSU, but uncertainty quickly arose. A few months before Sornpao enrolled on campus, Carr and former Owls head coach Rob King resigned. In a flash, her connection and recruiter were gone, putting her collegiate career in limbo.
Current head coach Benji Walton joined the team just a month before Sornpao did. Walton discussed how he had no idea what to expect when it came to her as a player or a person. He did not recruit her and was also uncertain because she came from a smaller club and had never seen her play.
Sornpao was redshirted her first year and did not play, but in her redshirt freshman year, she took over the starting goalkeeper job from senior Mady Carter halfway through the season.
“By the time it came to my sophomore [redshirt freshman] year where I actually had a chance to play, it was like following what [Carter] was doing, and I was able to be on the same level with her,” Sornpao said. “I was a little nervous in the beginning but by that time, I was definitely ready. I just had to get the first game out of the way and then I just played my game.”
The position of goalkeeper requires a large amount of physical ability, but equally important is both mental strength and leadership.
“Tiff is liked and respected by every single player,” Walton said. “She’s one of the players that unifies our team.”
According to Walton, she does this through her infectious, quirky sense of humor and outgoing personality. These things have helped her become a leader on the team is arguably one of the biggest and most important leadership positions in the sport.
Upon graduation, Sornpao has said that she would like to move on to play soccer professionally if she is able to, whether in the USA or abroad. Leaving KSU as the all-time leader in clean sheets will certainly help her case in moving to the next level.
“She has been a pleasant surprise and she’s a hard-working kid. Sometimes the pressure to succeed can take the fun out of the game but she does a good job to keep everybody enjoying it,” Walton said. “Her character really keeps our team rolling and it’s a really cool thing to have.”
