She thought about using her final season of eligibility to begin her graduate studies elsewhere—somewhere playing time was certain. Some days she was sure she would leave. It’s a well-trod path in college sports. But the more she weighed her choices, the more the answer stared her in the face. She wanted to compete for titles without sacrificing academic value. She wanted to find a team where everyone, even the goalkeepers locked in a zero-sum competition for minutes, not only challenged but supported each other. She wanted, well, somewhere just like Vanderbilt. But with time on the field.
So she stayed. And backed herself to make the wait worthwhile.
“I decided to stay because I knew I was valued in this program,” Gianoplus said. “Everyone on the team is valued, no matter your playing time, your minutes, your scholarship, whatever—every person plays a part on this team. I think it just took me a second to step back and realize that.”
After all, what’s another second after all those minutes.
Choosing the Path of Most Resistance
It is, by definition, easier to take the path of least resistance. It’s kind of why Gianoplus is a goalkeeper in the first place. She loved sports growing up, soccer, basketball, all of them. Everything except the running.
“They introduced a position where you could stand there and use your hands,” Gianoplus joked. “And I was like ‘Awesome, I’ll take that.’”
But what made goalkeeper look appealingly easy from afar wasn’t what lit her fire. She grew to love the mental challenge of a position that may offer only a few seconds of action during any given match but demands 90 minutes of focus, of seeing the entire field in front of you like a chessboard and organizing your defense. And she came to savor those few seconds of action. She almost apologetically notes that she doesn’t revel in the misfortune of others in everyday life. But yes, she craves the crestfallen look on the faces of opponents certain their shots were headed into the back of the net but for her intervention.
She grew into herself in goal. Gregarious once she’s comfortable, she’s also an inveterate planner and organizer who occasionally gets annoyed when her friends don’t telepathically intuit the detailed-but-unspoken plans she’s drawn up in her mind. On the soccer field, these weren’t just socially acceptable traits. They were prerequisites for a goalkeeper.
“Having a presence is one of the biggest words you’ll hear with goalkeeping, and I think it took a lot for me to learn to grow my presence and that confidence in myself,” Gianoplus said. “Goalkeeping brought out that different side of me, and I like to think it helped me become a more confident person in other aspects of my life. But there was definitely a lot of putting myself out of my comfort zone at first.”
Unfortunately for her, and exacerbated by recruiting limitations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges seemed to pay more attention to a different sort of growth. She is, as she diplomatically puts it, on the shorter side for her position. She was the last person on her Virginia club team to commit. Vanderbilt was the only power conference school to offer her, and even then, it didn’t initially come with any scholarship money. There were easier paths, good opportunities in their own right. She chose the more difficult path.
“Even if I was going to come into a program that was a reach for me, I had faith in myself,” Gianoplus said. “I knew they saw something in me, so I’m going to be able to contribute. And it is an amazing degree, amazing city. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Finding Everything but Minutes
Gianoplus didn’t wait long for her collegiate debut. With Vanderbilt leading East Tennessee State by a comfortable margin in the closing minutes of the fifth match of the 2022 season, head coach Darren Ambrose called on her to finish out the goalkeeping duties that Kate Devine and Sara Wojdelko had otherwise split. She played not quite five minutes. It was mop-up duty to get the freshman on the field. None of those caveats mattered—to her or her teammates.
“I was ecstatic—my heart was racing, I was ready to go,” Gianoplus recalled. “I mean, I did nothing and shanked a goal kick. But I remember when they announced my name, I could hear the bench so clearly. They were so loud. I could hear everyone cheering for me, so happy for me.”
Those would be her only minutes for the Commodores until last season, nearly 60 matches passing without another appearance. With two of the program all-time standouts ahead of her, including Wojdelko’s SEC Goalkeeper of the Year effort a season ago, Gianoplus had few paths to playing time at a position with the sport’s most unforgiving depth chart.
“There’s one position, that’s it,” Ambrose said. “If you’re a right back, you could play right midfield—there’s always hope. If you’re a goalkeeper and you’re not playing in goal, you aren’t playing.”
She still had the teammates whose voices all but carried her onto the field in her debut. And that camaraderie started in the goalkeeper room, with the people competing against her for minutes. She jokes that Wojdelko almost singlehandedly kept her off the field for four years, but they still talk or text almost every day and got together regularly when both were in the Washington D.C. area over the summer, where Wojdelko lives while pursuing her professional career with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. The same goes for Devine, now living in Nashville and a regular source of advice and counsel.
It didn’t escape goalkeeping coach Calum Langdale’s notice that after Wojdelko’s shootout saves clinched the SEC Tournament final last year, Gianoplus and fellow keeper Kennadie Marchand were at the front of the pack racing to engulf her. Or that when celebrations erupted after Vanderbilt clinched this year’s conference regular season title with a win against Texas, Marchand and junior keeper Layla Armas headed directly for Gianoplus.
“They share the shutouts, they share the victories, they share their mistakes,” Ambrose said of the goalkeeper culture that Gianoplus has helped shape. “Calum has done a tremendous job of building this healthy organizational dynamic. He’s done it in a way that is visible. You can see it, you can hear it, you can feel it. And I think a lot of it is a credit to them, that they just are really great kids. They genuinely care for each other.”
Competitors want to play. It isn’t fun going through the conditioning beep tests and early-morning weightlifting without the reward of match day. It’s frustrating to deal with the long travel weekends and late-night studying if the return isn’t those 90 minutes on the field. It stung going through Senior Day ceremonies only to stand on the sideline. All of that is real. But for Gianoplus, so are the memories of the pottery painting excursions players made seemingly every other weekend last fall, eager to get away from the stress of school and season—but not from each other. So are the memories of cheering for her teammates as they won the SEC Tournament and reached the Elite Eight, the same way they cheered for her in her debut.
“Stats are going to fade,” Gianoplus said. “But the relationships—these girls are going to be at my wedding. I’ve already been in two of their weddings. Those are the things that you’re not going to forget. I’ve always been more of a people person, I’m a chit-chatter or a yapper, obviously, but those conversations, those relationships, those are what you’re never going to forget.”
Now in Owen's Master of Marketing program, Gianoplus was a double major in human and organizational development and medicine, health and society (Sam Jordan/Vanderbilt Athletics).
The Decision, Vanderbilt Style
Still, with her undergraduate degree in hand and most of the class she arrived with departing, she contemplated going elsewhere for her final season. Ambrose made two things clear. First, they wanted her to stay and had the scholarship money to prove it. But second, he wasn’t going to make any empty promises about playing time. The door was ajar, he told her, but he couldn’t open it any further. She had to walk through it.
“I knew when I committed that I was going to have to work for everything,” Gianoplus said. “If he was sitting there telling me, 100 percent, you are a starter—no one should be promised that. It should always be off merit. Obviously, it’s hard in that situation to not hear a guarantee, but on our team, nothing is guaranteed. It was direct, but I needed to hear it.”
She struggled for a time in spring, perhaps weighed down by the dual responsibilities of being a captain for the first time and competing for a starting role. When she asked Langdale why she hadn’t started in the first spring match, his response was frank: She wasn’t performing as well in practice as her competition. Then he showed her the data and video evidence to back it up. Be yourself, he encouraged her. Trust yourself so that you don’t walk away from your final six months with any regrets.
She came back from spring break playing the best soccer of her life.
“She has a heart of gold—she cares about and supports whoever is in front of her,” Langdale said. “She’s someone you want in your corner. But she also has the mentality of ‘I’m going to beat you. I’m going to be better than you.’”
And for four years, whether or not the world saw it on the field during matches, she had been growing into the challenge.
Height notwithstanding, stopping shots has always been Gianoplus’ strength. That might seem like pretty much the only thing a goalkeeper needs to do, but it’s only part of the job description in the modern game. Vanderbilt relies on a possession-based style that builds attacks from the back instead of launching long balls and hoping forwards outrun defenders—“pretty soccer” as Gianoplus puts it. It requires keepers who are as confident with the ball at their feet, beginning the build-up, as they are stopping it with their hands.
For Gianoplus, it was also a weak link. And with little reason to think she was going to unseat the keepers ahead of her anyway, she could have put less than her full self into the drills and practice reps designed to hone skills. Instead, year by year, she worked. She bought in to Langdale’s advice to embrace failure in practice so that she would be comfortable in those spots in matches. She improved. With an offense that ranks second in the country in goals per match and has already shattered the program’s 21st-century record for goals in a season established a season ago, the evidence is there for all to see.
“I want every player who comes out of this program to feel they improve,” Ambrose said. “For four years, Alexa trained all the time but barely played. But has she improved? Absolutely. Our responsibility is to provide an environment that is challenging and gets the most out of them individually. If we’re doing our jobs and giving them feedback, standards and benchmarks that we expect of them, and they’re the right kid, they’re going to strive to reach them. That doesn’t guarantee they play all the time, but it shows that there’s an investment in them using their time wisely and effectively to improve in something and take those lessons out of this process.”
Not that the story would end quite that neatly. Two weeks into a preseason she began in the best physical condition of her life and playing brilliantly, she was diagnosed with mono. She missed three weeks, cleared to play only on the eve of the regular season. She didn’t play in the opening match, fueling insecurities and frustration that her opportunity might be slipping through her fingers. Devine and Wojdelko, again, provided the voice of reason from afar, reassuring her that it was just a temporary setback in a long season.
Gianoplus made her season debut when she played the second half of the team’s second match against ETSU, of all schools. She was in the starting lineup by the third match and played all 90 minutes in a win against nationally ranked Memphis. She’s scarcely left the field since and ranks 17th among all NCAA Division I keepers in goals-against average and in the top 10 in save percentage among power conference keepers.
From left, Kennadie Marchand, Alexa Gianoplus, Calum Langdale and Sara Wojdelko during the 2025 NCAA Tournament (Sam Jordan/Vanderbilt Athletics).
Worth the Wait
Now enrolled in the Master of Marketing program at the Owen Graduate School of Business, Gianoplus was secretly thrilled earlier this fall when her group for a big project included a classmate who had returned to Owen after several years working in marketing for Pepsi. That sort of experience, she reasoned, would be like a secret weapon for her group.
Her soccer teammates know the feeling. Yes, Gianoplus will be playing her first SEC and NCAA Tournament minutes in the days ahead, making her first saves in win-or-go-home matches. But no one on the roster has weathered more doubt, turned down more reasons to give up or proven more unfailingly supportive. One bad moment in a match won’t break her.
“She was going to be captain regardless because she’s glue,” Ambrose said. “She had proven for four years that team came first. That’s what I need to know about kids. If you’re going to lead, you’ve got to put aside what you want if it only betters you. And she had already shown that for four years. So even if she was splitting time or in and out of the goal this year, I felt strongly that she would be able to lead with integrity. She would be a team player. She would lead the locker room, regardless of what role she has on the field.”
Now, she has the role she always wanted. The role she waited for. With the team she stayed for.
And she knows better than to blink.
“I am loving my life right now,” Gianoplus said. “I could not ask for a better situation. I’m so beyond grateful for Darren, the coaches, the people who put me in this position, the girls who have supported me. I could not be more grateful or be having more fun than I ever have.”
About Anchored for Her
Anchored for Her is a comprehensive campaign to advance women and girls through the transformative power of sport. Within Vanderbilt Athletics, Anchored for Her’s initial $50 fundraising million goal will fuel investment in sustainable success for a new era of collegiate athletics through facility enhancements, endowed scholarships, coaching and staff positions, capital support and naming opportunities, the Anchored for Her General Fund, team-specific excellence funds and the Competitive Excellence Fund.
