Kansas University soccer sensation Caroline Smith can’t explain her ability to score so many goals.

She just does.

“I don’t know,” Smith said. “Ever since I was little I always liked to score goals. I just got better and better at it as I got older, and most people will tell you that you’re either a goal scorer or you’re not.”

Smith is definitely the former.

Need proof?

How about 12 goals in 15 games, a single-season school record? And those were her freshman statistics.

Her numbers are even better now.

Smith already has scored 18 goals this year. That alone would tie Smith with former Jayhawk Natalie Hoogveld for most goals in a career, but add Smith’s 12 tallies from last season and Smith has smashed that school record, too.

“I don’t know how she does it,” said Hoogveld, anything but sad that someone like Smith swapped places with her in the KU record book. “Caroline can just find the back of the net like a magnet.”

Kansas University sophomore Caroline Smith leads the Jayhawk soccer squad into the NCAA Tournament. Smith has scored 30 goals in her first two seasons, 12 more than second place on the list. The Jayhawks play Illinois State in the first round of the tournament Friday in Columbia, Mo.

Smith, who also holds KU’s career points total record with 66, earned All-Big 12 Conference first-team honors this year by leading the league in both goals (18) and points (39).

Ultimately, Smith’s success starts with a rare combination of speed and strength, but steadily improves because of her work ethic.

Yet even KU coach Mark Francis can’t explain Smith’s extraordinary scoring ability.

“I don’t know, because if I knew I’d teach everybody else to do it and we’d have 10 goal scorers,” Francis said. “Players that score goals, nobody knows why they do it. If you did, you’d teach other players to do it. But it’s a special gift.”

A special gift indeed, but one that might stem from another Smith trait — toughness.

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Ice influence

While Smith can’t put her finger on why she scores so easily, she knows her toughness developed from hockey. The 5-foot-2 soccer standout began on skates in Edina, Minn.

“I know I wouldn’t have wanted to suit up against her,” Francis said. “She probably would have taken me out.”

Smith’s older brother Tim says girls weren’t supposed to have contact with each other on the rink.

“They wouldn’t allow them to check each other, but I heard a few stories about her running into the wall and stuff,” Tim Smith said. “Heck, I’ve even heard stories where she would run into her own players at (soccer) practice, and knock them out.”

Smith confirmed her rugged tendencies on the ice.

Kansas University's Caroline Smith, left, moves the ball against Baylor's Ryan Lee during a game Sept. 26. Just a sophomore, Smith has already shattered KU's scoring record.

“I was pretty quick and stuff, and sometimes I would get going and go out of control and run into a wall or something,” Smith said, laughing about her youth.

Simon Whitehead, Smith’s soccer coach at Edina High, confirmed her toughness on the soccer field.

“Back then she didn’t really have a great first touch, so her second touch would just be to tackle,” Whitehead said. “She was short and very fast and with that kind of stature, it was tough for others to take the ball away from her.”

Mainly, Whitehead said, because Smith, the 2001 Gatorade Player of the Year in Minnesota, was a fiery competitor.

“Some girls want to win, and some girls will do whatever it takes for their team to win,” he said. “If there was a minute left and her team was down two goals, Caroline would still be trying to score three.”

She’s tough, all right

Francis, who took notice of Smith because of her play on her high school club team, couldn’t help but notice her toughness as well.

“You can’t knock her off the ball, and she scraps and fights for stuff,” said Francis, who said Smith was the “best player he’s ever coached.

“Some of the goals that she scores are a result of that.”

Fellow Jayhawk and Minnesotan Rachel Gilfillan, who hails from Cottage Grove, joked Smith’s strength was solidified by growing up in the gritty Northern U.S.

“I do think that we do grow them a little tougher up there,” Gilfillan said with a grin. “Almost every game this season people are trying to take her down, bang her up.

“But she’s so tough, just running through tacklers as if they were the ball. Some of that probably came from her hockey days.”

Smith wasn’t indestructible though last season, when she suffered the first significant injury of her career — damage to a medial collateral ligament in her right knee.

“I just prayed that it wasn’t my ACL,” Smith said.

The tear did not require surgery, but Smith — who at the time was leading the Big 12 in scoring — missed five games.

Smith returned for the Big 12 Tournament with a bulky brace and even managed a goal, but the time away from the game made her embrace the sport she started at the age of 3 even more.

“It definitely motivated me to work harder than ever,” she said. “Having to sit out those games really made me want to get back out there more than ever.”

Smith showed that in tri-weekly workouts last spring when she not only rehabbed her knee to 100 percent, but recorded personal bests in the 40 (5.1 seconds), vertical leap (26 inches) and a squat of 295 pounds, or nearly three times her body weight.

“She works out as hard as anyone I train with,” KU trainer Whitney Rodden said. “I’m not surprised that she’s come back even stronger. She has a goal and wants to reach it and does so by chasing it each and every time she’s in the gym.”

Not satisfied

For Smith, challenges still lie ahead.

She must win back her National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) All-American jacket — which she earned because of her 33 goals and 11 assists during her senior year of high school — from her brother Tim, who won the jacket in their annual shootout.

“We always play at this park near our house in Edina,” Caroline Smith said. “We’ll line up about 20 yards from each other and try to get as many shots past each other as possible. Last time he won.”

Despite her collegiate success, Smith is humble enough to recognize her weaknesses.

“Yeah, I score a lot of goals, but sometimes I miss a lot of chances that people aren’t going to talk about,” said Smith, who last summer was invited to the Under-21 National Team camp. “I can do some things better, like moving without the ball and being more active all the time.”

First tough task first though, as Smith and the Jayhawks will be trying for their first-ever NCAA Tournament victory.

Kansas, 16-5-1 and ranked No. 16 in this week’s NSCAA poll, will meet Illinois State at 4 p.m. Friday in Columbia, Mo. KU is the No. 13 seed in the 64-team meet tourney, and with a win would meet the winner of the Missouri-Eastern Illinois contest at 1 p.m. Sunday.

“Friday is going to be our biggest challenge,” Smith said. “Every game left this season is going to be our biggest challenge, because there are no more second chances.”

We’ll maybe one. Tim and that jacket.

“That shouldn’t be that tough,” she said with a smile.