Record Setter

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

When Erica Hamiton watched what seemed like a harmless shot skip through the goalie’s legs wtih 10 minutes left in the first half of the Palisades High girls soccer team’s Western League on January 31 at Stadium by the Sea, she looked almost embarrassed as teammates sprinted over to hug and high-five her as if she had just won them the City championship. Her third goal of the game was not quite that significant, but it did set her apart from every other player who has donned a Dolphins uniform.

It marked the fifth time Hamilton has scored three or more goals in a game this winter and upped her season total to 28, breaking the school record of 27 goals in a season set by Kathryn Gaskin in 2009-10. Even more remarkable is that Hamilton needed only 17 games to set a new program standard—three less than it took Gasklin to better Lucy Miller’s previous mark of 26 in 2005-06.

“I set a goal to at least get more than last year and once I got to 20 I thought I might as well keep going,” Hamilton said after sitting out the entire second half of Palisades’ 7-2 victory. The achievement came three days after her 18th birthday and in a peculiar way she has her grandparents to thank—for it was they who fostered her competitive nature at age 5 on her first AYSO team, the Strawberry Buttlerflies.

“My parents didn’t think this sport was for me because I was bugging people and not paying much attention but one day my grandparents said they’d take me to Target if I scored. Well, I did and we won 5-1.”

Hamilton has been scoring ever since and even after she recently switched from center forward to winger, where she had played since eighth grade, she is gifted with that “scorer’s touch” in the penalty area.

Next year, Hamilton will take her talent to the next level, having committed to Macalester College, a Division III program in Minnesota, along with teammate Kyra Morris

“Kyra committed first, she talked to me about it and when I contacted the coach they emailed back in five minutes,” Hamilton said. “I visited in September. It fits all my criteria.”

Hamilton plays for Santa Monica Surf (a club team coached by Pali High girls pilot Christian Chambers) and lives by UCLA where her dad Roy played basketball from 1975-79 before a two-year stint in the NBA with the Pistons and Trail Blazers.

Hamilton wears No. 10 (her dad’s jersey at UCLA) and each goal she scores from now on merely adds to her own record. She could not play as a freshman when everything was online due to COVID, but in three varsity seasons she has racked up 61 goals (she had 15 as a sophomore, 18 her junior year). Miller holds the school record with 88 career goals.

Hamilton’s “goal” now is to lead her team to its first City Div. I title. Palisades is seeded No. 2 and hosts a second-round game next Thursday.