After battling through physical setbacks and mental hurdles, graduate student forward Kelli McGroarty has refused to let those obstacles deter her play on the field — cementing her name in Iowa sports history. 

McGroarty accounted for four goals in Iowa’s 5-0 shutout win against Missouri State. McGroarty broke Iowa’s program record for most goals scored in a game and is the 10th Hawkeye to record a
hat trick.

McGroarty’s four-score game is the second most goals scored in a game this season, with only Alivia Scott of Tennessee edging McGroarty out with a remarkable five-score game of her own. 

While still hopeful McGroarty’s record can be broken, Iowa head coach Dave DiIanni understands a scoring magnitude like this could stand for time
to come. 

“Four goals is a lot,” DiIanni said. “When we play as hard of a schedule as we do, game in and game out, I think it’d be very difficult to think that will be topped.” 

Before rewriting the Hawkeye record book, McGroarty attended Eastern Regional High School in her home state of New Jersey. Here, McGroarty was awarded the 2018-19 Gatorade Soccer Player of the Year — an honor only awarded to 610 high school
athletes nationwide.  

Upon graduation in 2020, McGroarty found herself in a position of uncertainty due to the ambiguous ramifications of the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic. 

McGroarty felt it was in her best interest to stay close to New Jersey by attending La Salle University — a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference in Philadelphia. 

McGroarty recalls spending the majority of her first year of college athletics in the dorms and social distancing due to strict quarantine regulations. 

Despite the irregularities and challenges COVID-19 brought to the college athletic world, McGroarty still found success on the field. At La Salle, she was named to the conference’s all-rookie team in 2020, led the Explorers in goals during her second season, and earned a spot on the all-conference first-team the following year. 

Regardless of the accolades and honors on the pitch, McGroarty found herself struggling to communicate her mental health. With few resources and the negative stigma surrounding mental health, McGroarty continued to bottle up her emotions at La Salle. 

“[Communication] might seem like the easiest thing for some people,” McGroarty said. “But it was genuinely something that was so hard for me. My mind would go blank, and I genuinely could not think. Just speaking in general was the scariest thing ever. And so being able to do that one is the biggest growth I’ve had.” 

At the end of her third year, McGroarty felt she was still looking for more, so she decided to enter her name into the transfer portal in search of a new home.

“That’s where Dave [DiIanni] reached out to me. I had a few other schools that I was going to visit, but I came here and kind of fell in love with it right away, even with no one on campus.” 

After making the transition from Philadelphia to Iowa City, McGroarty finally found the help and resources she needed. At the University of Iowa, McGroarty visited with mental health professionals and athletic trainers to get her mind and body on the right track. 

McGroarty’s first year at Iowa was nothing short of outstanding, recording seven goals and four assists for Iowa soccer — earning offensive MVP.

Unfortunately, McGroarty only saw action for two games in the 2024 season, with ongoing ankle and back injuries preventing her from getting on the field. DiIanni and McGroarty decided it was in her best interest to medically redshirt — another challenge in her career. 

For McGroarty, acupuncture treatment from Iowa’s athletic department provided a new kind of relief, which had been previously foreign to her.

“I went from thinking my career was done,” McGroarty said. “I had a breakdown the night before and then decided to tell my coaches just exactly how much pain I was actually in, because I was trying to hide. And two days after acupuncture, I felt like I was a little kid again.”

McGroarty continues to receive acupuncture treatment as a part of her pain management routine. This new routine, along with improvement in mental health, forged McGroarty into a better version
of herself. 

After receiving the help she sought, McGroarty’s progress — both physically and mentally — has been clear to DiIanni.

“Every week, every training session she’s been with us has grown her into a more complete version of a soccer player than what we maybe got,” DiIanni said. “She’s always been a pretty pure goal scorer in the box and around the box. Every year with us has given her an opportunity to grow as a player and become a bit more complete overall.”

Throughout this strenuous process of physical and mental hurdles, McGroarty said she learned a lot about herself. McGroarty now prides herself on communicating her emotions, something she couldn’t have fathomed in the past.

Seeing a player succeed through so much adversity has been one of the most rewarding experiences of DiIanni’s coaching career, he said. 

“I’ve been a head coach for 23 years, and I think that the wins and losses in the field are important, but they pale in comparison to the student-athlete development process,” DiIanni said. “It’s been very rewarding for me personally, quite honestly, to see how she’s grown and developed into her own skin.” 

While McGroarty’s collegiate career has been anything but traditional, the graduate student’s determination has remained an instrumental part of her mantra. 

“I’m a very determined person, and I’ve been told I can’t do a lot of things in the past, and I set my mind to overcoming all that,” she said. “And so far, I’ve been able to pretty much overcome the downside I’ve had in my life.”