By most measures, USL Super League 2024-25 Golden Boot winner Allie Thornton had a heck of a season with 13 goals in 29 games, bringing home the league’s inaugural top scoring award and helping Dallas Trinity FC make the playoffs.
And while goal scoring was always on her mind, Thornton unexpectedly found herself in the Golden Boot race last season. “I think it caught me a little bit by surprise,” Thornton said at Trinity training on Tuesday.
“I think just my mindset throughout the whole season was, just perform your role. It wasn’t necessarily my goal at the beginning of the season. But as a couple of games went on, I realized, ‘okay, this would be a pretty good goal’.”
“You do your job to the best of your ability,” Thornton said, speaking of her game-to-game mindset, “and being a striker, that means scoring lots of goals. So I think it’s a testament to the team and how we came together as the season went on.”
“[The Golden Boot] was a title I was very grateful for.”
During the 2024-25 season, Thonrton and Trinity had to deal with a revolving door of playmakers. Sam Meza was pulling the strings for the fall section of the season before her loan ended. Over the winter break, Trinity signed Lexi Missimo to take over the reins, but she missed the remainder of the season after she was injured in April. Finally, Camryn Lancaster took on that playmaking role, albeit in a more second-striker fashion.
Thornton says that kind of change is just part of the game. “I think it definitely poses a challenge in some ways, but at the end of the day, it is also the nature of professional sports; players come and go, players are injured. Now you’re back, now you’re injured again.”
“So I think you have no choice but to adapt and adapt quickly. And so, yes, it was hard because we were searching to build those connections in training, but I think at the end of the day it worked out probably as well as it could have.”
Trinity General Manager and Interim Head Coach Chris Petrucelli says having Thornton around is a huge boost. “It’s just so hard to score goals in any league. To have somebody like Allie that you just feel confident [that] if she gets the ball in a box, you’re going to get something out of it. I think it’s a good feeling.”
So does Thornton think a repeat of the Golden Boot is a good personal goal for 2025-26?
“Do you say to yourself? ‘Okay, I did that last year. This year, that’s my goal. I’m gonna do it again.’ Yeah, I think so. I think it’s good to have some type of focus and some type of outline of what you want to accomplish. But also, I think it’s okay to kind of evolve them.”
“[Win the boot] again, and that would be pretty good for myself and the team.”
