By Shawn Fury
As Natalie Tavana tallied clutch goal after clutch goal last season for the women’s soccer team, Seton Hall’s social media accounts gave her a nickname befitting someone who conjured up scores whenever the Pirates needed them.
“The Magician gets number 9,” read the team’s Twitter feed when Tavana scored against St. John’s in a September victory.
“I think what they meant was some of my goals were incredibly unique,” Tavana says with a laugh. “I took my chances and some of the goals, I was like, that’s not going in. And it ended up going in, which was crazy. I’m also kind of creative in the attack. I try to bring as much as I can to jumble up the defense.”
Her stats also came from dedication and hard work. All told, Tavana scored a conference-best 12 goals and notched two assists for 26 points, earning BIG EAST Offensive Player of the Year honors. More importantly, her exploits spearheaded the finest Seton Hall season in a decade.
Seton Hall coach Josh Osit says of his star, “She’s got tremendous power with both feet, and she’s got a quick release. So if she has any space, it’s very difficult to get in front of her to block a shot.”
Growing up, Tavana played against older kids and always believed she “had to show my skills and prove to everyone, yeah, I’m young but I can be as good as you can be. … I had to think of different ways to score and perfect my technique.”
After notching three goals during her sophomore season, Tavana opened her 2023 campaign with a goal in a 2–1 victory over Central Connecticut State, followed by a three-goal performance against Binghamton as she became the first Pirate to record a hat trick since 2006. Tavana added two more against Le Moyne and then came up big in the biggest of BIG EAST games. The rundown: the lone goal in the win over St. John’s; the lone Pirates goal in a tie against Xavier; the lone SHU goal in a tie against No. 12 Georgetown; and finally, one of the goals in a 22 tie against Butler, a game that saw The Magician make a patented appearance.
“I have to shout out my Butler goal,” Tavana says. “I was facing the wrong way of the goal … and I was able to wrap my hips around it and hit it with my non-dominant foot, my left foot.”
Tavana praises teammates as effortlessly as she nets goals, noting how their work makes it easier for her to collect highlight-reel clips. “She’s a really smart kid and she has worked really hard as an individual to receive a lot of accolades she got this year,” Osit says. “But she also knows there’s no way she would’ve experienced the individual success that she had without her teammates. … I think there was a lot of mutual respect with Nat and her teammates because our work ethic as a program just grew so much.”
Past Seton Hall players also appreciated Tavana’s season, specifically the legendary Kelly Smith, who scored 76 goals during her career and made a video call to inform Tavana that she’d won the BIG EAST Offensive Player of the Year honors, the first Pirate to earn the award since Smith in 1999.
Now, as Tavana prepares for the 2024 season, she has her eyes set on more success for her team, which ended 2023 with a loss against Connecticut that kept the Pirates out of the conference playoffs. “I’m very excited to see the future of Seton Hall because we’re going to be a different program and everyone’s going to be looking at us differently next year,” Tavana says. “So I’m hungry to get out there for more.”
Good news for Seton Hall. Bad news for BIG EAST foes.
Shawn Fury is an author based in New York City.
