Gamecock Talk: Cat Barry Scores Big Goals (and Has Them Too)

foreign just a little bit more patient and I think I'm a little bit more of a complete player but I always tell people is I'm amazed when I got to college at how many things like I just wasn't taught in the club soccer High School soccer setting and just I've learned so much from our coaching staff they truly do like develop professionals so just being in this professional environment I've gotten to compete against Elite level players every day which just has pushed me to be faster be stronger quicker sharper with everything that I'm doing but then I'm also in an environment where I have to think about what I'm doing I'm a team player in the sense of we play very team oriented game of soccer especially here at South Carolina and so everything we do is to be a better teammate to fill the role that's needed for my team so I think I've added the ability to play in different areas of the field different positions serve different roles and also have just a much higher level understanding of the game and of my position and my jobs when I'm on the field [Music] senior forward cat Berry is a marked woman she earned first team all-sec honors last year and led the Gamecocks women's soccer team with 10 goals and seven assists as Carolina won the SEC tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament opponents will be doing their best to put the clamps on her in 2023 but she still has big goals for the upcoming season and Beyond she joins us now on Gamecock talk [Music] all right Cat last go-round for you your senior year not a pun but what are your goals for this season um yeah just I want to be better every year so my biggest thing this year is just to come back a little bit stronger faster be a little bit more dangerous and then as a team help my team succeed we achieved a lot of good things last year but senior year I want to take us up another level and I want to leave the program better than I found it which is a hard ask it's such a high level program but that's always been my goals from the second I walked in here well you've done some good things ever since you've been on campus you've led the team in scoring every year all SEC again last year and I think it led the SEC in in shots taken you're doing a lot doing a lot leading the demon in goals and assist where can you get better yeah I think there's always areas to get better in the best way I can describe it is I don't feel like I've hit my like ceiling yet and so I feel like there's still just things that I know I can be sharper I can be a better finisher I can help my teammates get involved more I think as a team um bring more people into the game how my teammates be more dangerous and more successful so I think there's just little things like that there's times that I'm a perfectionist so I can think back to last year and I'm like I should have finished that one even in a game we ended up winning it's the life of being a striker and so for me it's little things like that I just want to be cleaner and sharper everywhere on the field this year when you look back at your 18 year old self when you first got here and you obviously you made an impact on campus when you first got here but where do you think you've improved the most since day one just a little bit more patient and I think I'm a little bit more of a complete player um what I always tell people is I'm amazed when I got to college at how many things like I just wasn't taught in the club soccer High School soccer setting and just I've learned so much from our coaching staff they truly do like develop professionals um so just being in this professional environment I've gotten to compete against Elite level players every day which just has pushed me to be faster be stronger quicker sharper with everything that I'm doing but then I'm also in an environment where I have to think about what I'm doing I'm a team player in the sense of we play very team oriented game of soccer especially here at South Carolina and so everything we do is to be a better teammate to fill the role that's needed for my team so I think I've added the ability to play in different areas of the field different positions serve different roles and also have just a much higher level understanding of the game and of my position and my jobs when I'm on the field teams Know Who You Are by now I mean obviously that you've been in the in the lineup for going into your fourth year now every year how do you handle that pressure they know who you are they're paying a lot of attention to you you can't exactly hide out there yeah for sure honestly like that's something I've always loved um I like that pressure that's also kind of like I said part of being a forward um it is that moment that like the ball pops out to you or you create that chance and you make it and everyone loves you and you miss it and everyone hates you it's one of those things um but for me like that's the ultimate compliment is the fact that other teams want to pay attention to me they want to Mark me they want to be yelling to cover me whatever it is so for me that's always kind of been a compliment something that I kind of wear with pride I know it's going to be a challenge and I know it only gets harder and harder but that also makes the flip side of it when my team is successful and when I'm successful makes it even better because you know that it never got easier it only is getting harder so to continue to be able to improve knowing that I may be a center of attention or maybe a focus of other teams if I can do it under those conditions then I can do it under any conditions type of thing and it gives me an opportunity to bring teammates into the game like I mentioned especially this year we have a lot of really dangerous attacking options coming back and coming into the system with some freshmen so being able to draw attention to me so then I can pass my teammates I think that's part of my game that I've continued to want to develop and think is like an underrated kind of part of my game is to be able to Dish passes out create chances for my teammates and also be a playmaker in some ways and so that's fun for me as well when I'm drawing attention to be able to find that open teammate as a senior do you feel like you have to be a leader in some capacity whether it's in the locker room or the coach's ass out of you or does that just come as a natural progression because you've been here so long everything honestly I'm always someone who is inclined to try to take on like kind of some of that leadership role I'm a pretty vocal person pretty vocal player on and off the field so that's something that even like going into my sophomore junior year as I started to be a returner and a returning starter kind of a role that I put on myself but then also with that is kind of asked of us as seniors as now a captain which is just a really cool opportunity for me to kind of now not only is it something that I expect of myself that I get to do but then it's really like also kind of my job in another sense the same way that things on the field are so it's cool to be able to kind of be that person to have others lean on and look at but I also just love that responsibility of being able to be a role model to be able to be the person that people can look to and they want to see how we do things here um what to do in a trying moment when things get hard whether that's summer conditioning or when we go down a goal in a game or someone misses a chance or I miss a chance it's something that I've had the opportunity to learn a lot from a lot of good leaders and so to be able to kind of pay that back now is really cool a cool stat for you off the field you graduated in three years now student athletes don't exactly have a lot of time to themselves and you're training year-round games practices travel study halls whatever and it's not like you were taking some kind of cupcake major you were Honors College what chemistry had three years how did you do that honestly I kind of laugh now I'm like how did I do that but honestly like it just kind of was one of those things where I started putting puzzle pieces together and so it was a couple semesters of taking some really hard classes but honestly like that was going to be the nature of being in the Honors College being in my major anyway and so I kind of just set a goal for myself and pretty special thing and I think a little different than uh your typical student athlete experience though our team is works really hard in the classroom so it is a standard that was set for all of us but it was kind of a challenge that I set out for myself and that's kind of how I've been oriented my whole life why chemistry um it's a good question I had a couple of amazing chemistry teachers in high school one of my like greatest life mentors was my High School AP Chemistry teacher and so I had such a great experience with that and both the classroom and just the people that I had met through that scope of study and then coming into college I honestly wasn't sure and I always knew I wanted to do something that would give me opportunities to do people-oriented work because I love working with people I love working in teams kind of like I've touched on and so I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do and so I'm chemistry pre-med so I also did all my pre-med requisites during my undergrad so my goal long term when I'm done playing would be to do something in medicine having had some injuries myself and a surgery recovery at one point I think it would be really cool to have the opportunity to help people go through things like I've been through get back on the field go through similar injuries and be able to have those meaningful relationships while also using the science and skills that I've learned in the classroom to actually help people and continue to be connected to sports so it was kind of good intersection of a few things for me all right so Dr Barry so what are we what do you what are we studying now with your Master's work or what right um so you can't do a master's in chemistry without doing your doctorate which I do not have time for nor is that in my plans for the short term so I'm doing my Masters of Science and business analytics with the option to roll into my MBA so potential to leave here with two maybe three degrees while I'm playing soccer which is pretty cool to me so I'm going to have a little bit different asset I think a business side will give me a good perspective going into medicine going into something else like that and kind of just play to some of my other interests I've always liked like some marketing and analytics type stuff and I still have some of that math and like problem solving element to it so just a little something different that still had the flexibility to work with soccer and work with the short time frame of like a year long or year and a half Masters that I was trying to figure out and then still offer me some new challenges because like I said I'm always up for a challenge so that's something new that I kind of wanted to get out of my comfort zone and do something different for a year originally from Hingham Mass where is that uh it's about 20 minutes off the boss the boss coast of Massachusetts why don't you have a Boston accent they tell me I say everything weird my roommates love I say they say stuff funny because they all have Southern Accents in my eyes um I say Wicked that's probably like the biggest thing that like stops people in their tracks I'm like I'm having a wicked good day or like that was wicked awesome and they're like huh what did you just say but then I'll catch my roommates all of a sudden being like I'm wicked annoyed and I'm like what was that did you just say Wicked did I hear that right and they're like oh my God so I guess it goes both ways and I say like y'all and stuff now because I've been here a few years but um I don't think as many people still have Boston accents as you would think maybe my dad has a little bit of one but it kind of has worn off generation to generation so yeah because it can stand out in a crowd especially down here yeah all right so what's the best thing to do in Hingham uh anything related to the ocean for me like going to the beach driving down to watch sunsets that's like my favorite thing to do I also just love the city of Boston I could talk about it for like ever so I'll spare you um but it is just the greatest City in my eyes the best place to grow up going in there you can do anything watch sporting events go to the um water go like out to the beach go on boats go down to the cape which is my other favorite thing but also you have all the perks of a city you have the history the tradition everything like that and it's a perfect size in my eyes so I can't recommend it enough well there are several folks on the women's soccer team from the northeastern part of the country and obviously coach uh Charlene Jamie Smith have connections up there because of their their time up there as well so what was the biggest adjustment for you in moving to the the South yeah yeah well I was new I wanted to go somewhere different for school as much as I love it up there I just knew it was an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and be if I wanted to play at the level I wanted to play at I knew I probably needed to leave the Northeast just because the school was up there are Great Schools don't get me wrong but don't play in as competitive conferences or at the level of soccer that I wanted to play at and so coming down here was an adjustment a lot of ways obviously weather-wise it's a little different but that was something I was looking forward to I've done my share of blizzards and Winters up there so I was excited to have a little different weather but other than that it's just kind of like a slower Pace down here to me which is probably good for me I like to uh move fast and get things done kind of like I have mentioned but it's just a different change of pace I think everything here just moves a little bit slower is a little bit more like laid back easy going so that was probably the biggest adjustment I'd be like in line somewhere to be like why is no one having any urgency a little bit but it's really just a different different we have too much urgency maybe up north sometimes all right so now I know you're year round with soccer now with your training and all that but that wasn't always the case you played a lot of sports growing up and even through high school what was that so I played basketball football and Lacrosse at the varsity level in high school as well so that was a huge part of who I was I actually went to a boarding school in high school so I lived away from home for four years before I even came to college and the role at my school was that you had to play two team sports every year be involved in like two team activities that included also like you could do like the play or something like that but for me I was like no-brainer I want to play sports and I want to play all of them at the highest level that I can I was gonna say nowadays you see so much specialization for young people in sports where they're playing whatever it is soccer baseball or softball year-round and maybe kids aren't playing two three sports like they did 100 years ago when I when when I was growing up but do you feel like that helped you either on or off the field uh in any in the more significant ways definitely did for me in high school especially like it's like I was in the best shape ever because I was going to school from like 7 A.M to 3 o'clock straight from school to my after school practice so that was basketball or lacrosse and then I'd instantly go from there to my club practice which was like 7 30 to 9 p.m or 9 30 p.m and then I'm like going home do my homework so like I was just getting like so much conditioning I was always had to be like locked in you had to learn to manage your time so if nothing else like even just off the field those skills that it translated and gave me were huge you mentioned you had an opportunity to play against Aaliyah Boston former Gamecock All-American who's now doing great things in the WNBA did you ever go one-on-one against her for like a short time in that game I think maybe for like a minute or a minute and a half and I think she fouled me like once and I think that was like pretty much our extent of Iowa stuff people she didn't score on me while I was guarding her so that's like my claim to fame on it if Alia hears this she would kick my butt I'm not claiming that at all and they won the game they beat us for uh the new doing the title in the final that year we played against each other but it is just such a great story and so small world like looking back now that I can kind of say that my teammates laugh because they're like this is your favorite story ever to tell I'm like well why wouldn't it be like it's just such an awesome like to be able to say that we played against each other in high school and I just think it's so amazing like two girls from these like small kind of unknown schools of Massachusetts to everyone down here are able to come down here and just compete at such a high level and like work to make a name for ourselves and our programs and I look up to her so much and everything she did and she accomplished in the roles she played in the community here so being able to kind of like follow her and have the two of us both be down here with those like kind of similar backgrounds is just such a cool thing to me do you still play any of the other sports casually even if this is pick up or I love to shoot basketball like go out and shoot hoops and um that's like just always been something for me that is such like a mind-clearing um thing so whenever I get the chance to go out and just kind of get shots up um like old school I used to like do it in high school for hours just as kind of like when I needed to switch off from school or from soccer um and do something kind of like Mindless although I am really competitive sometimes it's like all right now I have to make like 10 in a row or whatever it is but um there always will just be such a special place in my heart for that Sport and I just could see myself being involved or a fan for the rest of my life I think if I had known how much I was gonna love it and call or in high school looking back I if I wasn't at a school where they were then like the number one team in the country consistently maybe I would have tried to play and could not play here um but it would have been it would have been something that I would have considered had I been able to foresee my high school basketball career Maybe well it worked out well for you there here yeah I don't I wouldn't change the thing well now you you're involved in the community um with the USC dream on three yeah did some volunteer work with them tell us about that yeah yeah I'm three I'm actually really excited about this organization is you an official partner kind of through USC Athletics this year so we have a team I think there's 12 of us total um of USC athletes right now and we're fundraising to basically give a USC sports dream weekend to a kid from the Columbia Community who's a USC fan who has some sort of life-changing disability condition whatever that may be so basically it takes about ten thousand dollars to fund a dream weekend and so we're fundraising that right now we're doing all sorts of we're gonna run some events once school gets up and running again um and then we've done a bunch of Outreach this summer so we've already raised almost 600 or 6 500 towards our goal right now and then once we get our kid which we're in the process of doing and identifying right now we'll find out exactly what sport their dream is related to so it could be football soccer baseball basketball whatever it is and then we find out their interests we find out what they like what kind of you know food they like to eat what things they like outside of that what they want to see who they want to meet and we like make it all happen for them and we kind of build this relationship with this kid over the course of between now and their dream weekend and then it's supposed to last beyond that for them and kind of to give this kid an opportunity to feel special and feel loved when they may other times in their life feel like they you know might not belong or they might not always get the same opportunities we get and just to have that opportunity we get so much here and I'm just so grateful to be at Carolina to be an athlete here to be able to represent represent this community to do something like that that'll just be so special and life-changing and we're working with another organization that I've done a lot of volunteer work with the therapy place which is out of Columbia to kind of build a partnership potentially there to to continue this stream on three partnership going between those three organizations over the next few years so hopefully like we can continue to find kids that are worthy of um getting this awesome dream weekend and continuing to fundraise and make it happen and make it a annual or even potentially semi-annual thing we might if if we could um we could do one like if we get a fall dream and then we could try to um run it back in the spring if it goes well which is unprecedented I think for dream on three but the Carolina Community has already stepped up so much which is just so amazing and we're just continuing to fundraise and start to plan and make that happen which is something that's going to be really amazing to be a part of well student athletes don't have a lot of free time between as we talk about doing everything for your sport uh in classes and you graduating in three years saying things like that why was it so important for you to you know take such a a big role in this yeah um like I kind of touched on earlier helping people has always been something that I'm just like so passionate about going back to high school like volunteering giving back has always been something that has been a priority to me and I think just like I said like I've been given so much in my life and I recognize the opportunity that I have and that I've been given and the Privileges that I have and so to be able to use that to give back to other people who both helped get me to where I am or support me in where I am or maybe don't get the same chances to be where I am is something that has just always been such a priority to me and I feel like is so important and so just having the opportunity to be a part of something like that I've done a lot of work with like Special Olympics going back to high school the therapy place like I said and now this so that specifically is something that just has always had a special place in my heart working with kids who maybe have disabilities or conditions that just change their life and like I said to be able to make someone feel special and loved and just be a light in someone's life who maybe doesn't always have it the easiest is just something that I think is an incredible opportunity and that we should do every chance we get and so I've been so grateful to have the Carolina Community to have the opportunities that I do and I just want to share that with everyone that I can and continue to be a person in this community who understands that I've been given a lot and then also be able to give back and thank the people who support us get us to where we are and then also give back to those who we can in any way possible that'll certainly make an impact on someone's life who's had the biggest influence on you throughout your life I think that a lot of people have had a huge influence in my life I think my parents are just like the ultimate example to me my mom is just my rock in so many ways um and she's just like the hardest worker um that I know and she just like loves my family more than any anything in her life and is always puts herself aside puts herself second to everyone else's needs and she is so selfless in a way that I hope one day I can be a fraction of as hard working and as selfless as she is and then my dad is just like such a he's a firefighter so I've always just looked up to and admired How brave he is he's always just like the calming presence in the chaos and is able to be um so smart so wise and so calm when things get crazy and so I've always admired and looked up to that and both of them have just been my biggest fans throughout my entire career my life in and out of sport and Beyond and so I think just having them and then I have amazing grandparents that are just huge fans of me my grandfather just passed away a few weeks ago but he was literally like my number one fan in soccer and everything that I did and like my mom so selfless so hard working and so I think I just try to be like them and emulate them and then give back everything that they've given to me in my career and in my life so you have three siblings and all of you first name begins with the letter c the berry family brought to you by the letter c anything behind that or just coincidence so my order brothers and they named them both the Seas and then I think they were like kind of trying just to figure out what to do and then they kind of had my name picked out and really liked it they loved the name Catherine and then once it was there they're like well what are we just not going to name my little brother of the sea like that would just be a little weird so it wasn't necessarily intentional my dad's name is Christopher um and so when they name my older brother is Christopher Jr so like that started it and then they just kind of like had other names that started with a c that they liked and so it just kind of like one of those things that I think just snowballed and they had names they liked and it ended up uh becoming a thing and you have a sister here so my older sister just graduated with her master's here um in the spring so she was here for five years did her undergrad here and then did her master's degree as well okay well women's soccer and women's basketball especially the last seven eight years probably the two most uh decorated programs uh here at USC uh do you get recognized a lot on campus obviously when Aaliyah Boston was walking around campus everybody knew awesome do you recognize her on campus every once in a while it's so funny actually last year like right after I want to say it was our cleansing game last year I had some random girl like run up to me on campus and was like can I take a selfie with you like like random things like that I've had like a couple of interactions and a lot of times people will sort of like slowly put together that I play soccer it's not so much like oh my God are you Cadbury like I'm not that famous but every once in a while I do and even in the community that's the funniest thing to me we have so many because we run like summer camps and do much so much stuff like out in our community as program um that a lot of times I'll have girls like from that um or their families come up and recognize me sometimes when I'm like at work or other things like that other people come in they're like do you soccer sorry this is really weird and I'm like yeah I do and they're like okay well your cat right and I'm like yeah and they're like that you can tell they like sort of know but they don't really uh put all the pieces together but every once in a while yes and definitely you'd be surprised I was surprised because there's just like college athletes aren't recognized like that up where I'm from um so coming down here that was like one of the coolest things to me is just like how invested the community is in the university and its athletes and so being able to see that and reap the benefits of that firsthand is just like something I could have never imagined before coming down here I whenever soccer is done for you after your Gamecock career maybe after a pro career maybe after an international career whatever whatever happens after that you talk about you know maybe becoming a doctor or what where do you see yourself 10 years from now maybe yeah honestly few years and a lot of things just kind of depend on like how long I end up playing for and how healthy I am and everything like that but like I said the two things that will always and forever be a priority to me are helping other people so that's huge to me and I don't think I'll ever be far from Sports so whether that's in medicine in a community service type setting whatever it is something like that I want to be able to be a problem solver and a leader and giving back to others helping others serving others and so I think that anything that allows me to serve in a role like that especially with anything that correlates or is related to Sports in one way or another is something that I could see myself doing for sure one more season to go what's been your most memorable moment here at South Carolina so far either on or off the pitch for sure winning the SEC tournament this past year is just so unbelievable I tell people all the time like I think back to that whole week and I'm like that just doesn't even feel real to me like it was just so special being there with my team being down in Pensacola is just unbelievable it's such a fun week just to be with each other our team was just so close last year but then just having like all those moments a couple that stand out to me you're like hitting my PK and celebrating the PK shootout winning the semifinal and then that goal from me debris in the final and just celebrating that and like laying on the field with the confetti and like my hat after we one is like something that every College athlete dreams about so getting to experience and live that firsthand but also to have had a hand in it known that you know I contributed to that run in one way or another was just so special to me and last thing for you what are you looking forward to the most about this season I'm looking forward to that can be a little bit of pressure but it's something that I just am thinking about the whole way is just taking advantage of the opportunities that I'm given and knowing that I have an opportunity this year to prove everyone a little bit more wrong and just to be a little bit more a little bit better everywhere so I just want to help our team however I can and I'm looking forward to seeing how good we can get and just um watching our team compete this year well good luck good luck this year with whatever's next after soccer thank you all right that's Kent Berry I'm Brad Muller this has been Gamecock talk foreign