Oct. 24, 2011
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By Miquel Jacobs
Assistant Media Relations Director
COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina senior Kayla Grimsley picked up two honors and freshman Ariane Lukens earned her first career national honor Monday to highlight a weekend that saw the Gamecocks win at least a share of their first SEC regular season and eastern division titles. Grimsley was named the SEC Offensive Player of the Week and was selected to the Top Drawer Soccer National Team of the Week, and Lukens was selected as a CS360 Primetime Performer.
It is Grimsley’s third career SEC weekly honor and marks just the second time a Gamecock has been selected SEC Offensive Player of the Week, with Grimsley earning the first selection on Sept. 15, 2008. Lukens is the first Gamecock this season to be selected as a CS360 Primetime Performer, which recognizes the top 13 valuable players weekly who played against high-quality opposition.
Grimsley had a record breaking for the Gamecocks with one goal and three assists to give Carolina a share of its first ever SEC title. Grimsley’s five-point weekend moves her to first place on the South Carolina all-time career points list at 116 (42 goals and 32 assists). She is now the only active player in the NCAA with over 40 goals and 30 assists in her career and is the only active player in the SEC with over 100 career points. Grimsley assisted on Ariane Lukens’s game-tying goal at LSU before adding a final assist on Carolina’s fourth goal of the match. Grimsley then added an assist on the game-winning goal against Arkansas before scoring in the 49th minute to break Jennie Ondo’s points record that had held strong since 1999. She has now scored 14 game-winning goals in her career and assisted on 11 other game-winning goals. Grimsley is now third in the SEC in points in conference play at 18 and leads the league in assists in SEC play.
Lukens scored her first two career goals in Thursday’s win at LSU to put South Carolina in position to win its first SEC regular season crown. Lukens scored headers in the first half and second half to both tie the game and then win the game for the Gamecocks in their biggest win at Baton Rouge since the 2005 season. On a team dominated by upperclassmen attackers, Lukens became the only freshman to score multiple goals on the season for South Carolina.
South Carolina travels to Florida this Friday night for the regular season finale as the teams jockey for seeding in next week’s SEC Tournament.
