Iowa soccer sophomore Meike Ingles hoped to one day score a hat trick in her collegiate career. Her goal became a reality on Sunday.

The forward became the ninth player in program history — and the first since 2017 — to tally three goals in a match, propelling the Hawkeyes over Illinois, 3-2, at the Iowa Soccer Complex.

Ingles hit the game-winning shot in the 84th minute when graduate forward Alyssa Walker passed her the ball outside the penalty area. She fired a shot from just outside the penalty area that sailed over Illinois sophomore goalkeeper Julia Cili and into the net.

“I feel like I had more momentum heading into that goal,” Ingles said. “It was super exciting.”

Ingles also achieved the feat playing just 40 minutes of the match as a bench player. Sunday’s game marked her fourth appearance of the season, as she missed 12 of the Hawkeyes’ games because of injury.

Before Sunday’s match, she hadn’t tallied a goal since last season.

The 5-foot-2 sophomore from Shelby Township, Michigan, opened the scoring in the match in the 41st minute. Ingles maneuvered herself into the goal area, where she got in front of Cili before sending the ball into the net.

Illinois evened the score in the 57th minute, but Ingles put Iowa back in the driver’s seat after Walker gave her the ball off a short pass. She pushed the ball forward, and after one bounce, it went across the goal line.

Illinois knotted the score again in the 74th minute before Ingles put the final goal on the board 10 minutes later.

“Today, I thought, senior day, they can often be flat,” Iowa head coach Dave DiIanni said. “And they weren’t. I thought they were pretty focused and driven, and our bench was good again for the second game in a row where our bench comes in the last 20 minutes of the second half and impacts the game.”

BIG PICTURE

 With the win, the Hawkeyes move to 10-5-1 overall and 4-4 in the Big Ten. Iowa is on its first two-match winning streak since the start of Big Ten play.

The Hawkeyes are keeping up the pace to qualify for the eight-team Big Ten tournament, as they have 12 points in the Big Ten standings. Iowa is tied for sixth place with Penn State and Minnesota. The Hawkeyes have two more matches in the regular season.

The Hawkeyes had to fight in their last two matches, as they came back from a 3-0 deficit at Nebraska last Thursday to win 4-3 — the biggest comeback in program history.

“We’ve had a lot of adversity early in the year with injuries, with different things happening on the team, but we’ve always found a way to fight back,” junior defender Sam Cary said. “These two wins this week leading into the final week and the tossup that is the Big Ten, it’s such a close conference right now to see who makes the tournament and these wins were necessary for us, but they also created confidence for our team going into next week.”

WILHELM EARNS THE VICTORY  

After she was subbed out for sophomore Macy Enneking in Iowa’s last match against Nebraska, redshirt junior goalkeeper Monica Wilhelm played the entire 90 minutes and Sunday and earned the win despite surrendering two goals.

Wilhelm possesses an 8-5-1 record this season and has started every match with a 1.01 goals against average. She is 10-11-2 in three seasons of play.

UP NEXT

The Hawkeyes will have their final home match of the regular season against Minnesota at 7 p.m. on Thursday.

The Hawkeyes are 6-14-4 against the Golden Gophers in program history.