Goalie locks down defense with trust

Gussie Johns knows the value of trust.

As the starting goalie on the USC women’s lacrosse team, Johns has made 83 saves this season. Her consistency between the pipes helped the Women of Troy to a perfect 17-0 record during the regular season.

The sophomore’s supreme calmness in net can be largely attributed to her approach to the game.

“So much of being a goalie is trusting your defense or trusting your abilities or trusting that it’s just one goal that went in. Trusting that it’s a process of getting better,” Johns said.

The Washington, D.C. native has seen improvement in her game over the years — not just from positional and technical standpoints.

“I think the mental aspect of the game has improved much more than I ever thought it would honestly,” Johns said.

Johns typifies the ideal netminder: Her confidence between the ears translates into dominance between the posts. She moves on after conceding a goal, which is certainly easier said than done for someone who is the last line of defense.

Several factors contributed to her decision to pick up a goalie stick. Bo, one of her three older brothers, was a goalie. As is often the case, the younger sibling wanted to follow in the older sibling’s footsteps. But her love for the position also comes from her ability to customize her playing style.

“Goalie is unlike any other position obviously on the field,” Johns said. “Just the things you can do as a goalie are honestly endless. Every goalie in the NCAA plays differently.”

Her fluidity and lightning-fast reactions come from hours of training on McAlister Field ­— and from years of experience on different playing surfaces. Her tennis background contributes to her remarkable hand-eye coordination, while her seamless ability to push off in the crease comes in part from experience playing hockey. The choice to play goalie was a natural one for Johns.

“It just implements so many other aspects of different sports that I’m like why not play goalie?” Johns said.

While goaltending requires individual skills like sound positioning, Johns is hardly isolated from the rest of this USC defense.

“I think so much of defense is about playing together as a unit,” Johns said, stressing the importance organization in the zone defense USC runs. “It really is about how we all work together because if one person is off, it’s going to make the whole zone look bad and it would make the zone not function properly.”

As a program in just its fourth year of existence, the Women of Troy returned all of their defensive personnel from last season. USC’s goalie has been at the center of this defense’s evolution.

“Being able to have that core of people come back and really have that chemistry just right off the bat coming into this season and coming into this fall I think was a huge game-changer for us,” Johns said.

Johns has earned MPSF Defensive Player of the Week on multiple occasions this season, as her standout play is centered on the foundation of consistency. One of the keys to her steadiness in goal is her ability to adapt to the game along with the rest of the defense.

“Each game is going to present itself differently, and you kind of just try to take it one play at a time,” Johns said.

A collective sense of trust exists among this group — a sense of trust that, in many ways, starts with No. 3 in goal.

“It’s just been a great season, and I think from each game we’ve improved,” Johns said. “And we realize that each team is different and each team has different strengths.”

Despite its flawless record as it enters the MPSF Tournament, USC has not jumped out to the lead in every game this season. But head coach Lindsey Munday’s team embodies the spirit of its talismanic figure in goal. Johns’ mindset is the team’s mindset: Move on and play the next play.

“Whatever is coming next, you have to think about it one play at a time,” Johns said. “Whatever happens next, try and save the ball. Try and communicate together with your defense to make a stop.”

Johns’ equanimity in goal is no coincidence.

“I’m a creature of habit honestly. I’ve always been since I was younger in anything that I did, whether it be sports or everyday life. It’s something that honestly just sets my head and gets me in the zone of being ready to play,” Johns said.

With intimidating eye black and a cool head, Johns takes the field prepared for the inevitable twists and turns of a lacrosse game.

“It’s bringing that consistency factor to playing, just because there are so many unpredictable things in the game of lacrosse and in playing goalie that being able to have pregame rituals or superstitions or just things that I do every time before I play,” Johns said. “It just kind of puts me at ease and makes me know that all of those things are set. And from there, you kind of just take it, like I said, one play at a time.”

Yet even for someone as calculated as Johns, some pre-game routines are rather arbitrary.

“I’ve got a lot of superstitions and rituals. Some of them I can’t quite explain,” Johns said.

Off the field, Johns studies business administration at USC. As the daughter of two enterprising businesspeople, she has grown to love entrepreneurship.

“That world has always kind of intrigued me where you can kind of create your own destiny and create your own world and bring in all the elements that you like,” Johns said. “I hopefully want to start my own company or work for a startup.”

One of the most important traits an entrepreneur can have is trust. Whether it be trust in a vision or trust in the quality of a product or service, an entrepreneurial dream can become a reality when hard work and attention to detail meet fearlessness and creativity.

That sounds a whole lot like goaltending.