Four games into the season, senior Chelsea Drennan already only needs two more assists to tie the program's career record of 33. In fact, she only needed four more assists going into the 2016 season. She already notched one against Oklahoma and another against NC State.
For her to be in the record books as an all-time Gamecock great excites her, but she only wants to aid her team in the best possible way.
“There’s some really awesome girls that already hold the record right now that I would love to be a part of, but more just for the team helping to get goals as well,” Drennan said. “Usually, that’s my role on the team ... I'll do whatever it takes.”
Even dating back to club and high school soccer, Drennan was the main distributor for her team. So much so that people were telling her she needed be less giving with the ball and to shoot more.
“My mom and my club coach always told me in the monthly meetings with my club coach, and he was like you need to be more selfish, you need to take more shots, you need to try to score more goals,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, that’s always in my head, but it’s always been my style of play to pass it off to someone else to score the goals. That’s just the role I’ve kind of accepted and that I’ve played for so long.”
Her journey to become a Gamecock started back in high school. She was four-star recruit out of T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina, and won South Carolina Coaches Association of Women’s Sports Class 4A state Player of the Year twice and won the Gatorade State Girls Soccer Player of the Year in the state of South Carolina her senior year.
Her decision to come to South Carolina was a tricky one, something she had to put some thought into.
“Growing up, my dad actually went to Georgia, so kind of contradicting to coming here,” Drennan said. “But I grew up in SEC football, watching all the football games all the time at Georgia. I knew I wanted to stay in the South — close to home, but not too close. Clemson was too close to home for me, and I hate Clemson. I knew I wanted to stay in the South, and I knew I wanted to go to a big school, a big SEC school.”
When she arrived on, though, she immediately started to make an impact on coach Shelley Smith’s team. Her freshman year, she started 20 out of 23 matches and set the school’s freshman record for assists with 12.
In her sophomore season, the season when South Carolina made it to the NCAA Tournament semifinals, she started every game. She lead the Gamecocks in assists with seven and netted three goals. Her most unforgettable assist came that year.
“My most memorable one is probably against Florida my sophomore year,” Drennan said. “It was a corner kick at the end, and I’m pretty sure it was Savannah that scored off of it. That was a huge win for us. We were up 2-0 in the first half. Second half came, and Florida is a great team and came back to tie it up 2-2. Our team has always been known to be pretty relentless, so we got a corner with not even five minutes left and Savannah put it away.”
Last season, she led South Carolina in assists for the third straight season and was third in the SEC with a total of 10. The Gamecocks ended their season early, though, as they bowed out of the NCAA Tournament in the first round to UNC-Wilmington.
But this season, Drennan is confident in her team and says they are in a good place to win games. From the sound of it, she’s willing to help out her team in any way possible, whether that means scoring goals or providing opportunities for others to score.
Drennan and the Gamecocks will be in action Friday night against No. 6 ranked Clemson and again Monday night against Charlotte.