Skip To Main Content
Skip To Scoreboard
Share:

Baylor Hall of Fame Profile: Molly Cameron

Share:
General 9/15/2015 12:00:00 AM
Sept. 15, 2015 By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

(This is the second in a series of profiles of the 2015 Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame inductees)

Nearly 20 years later, Molly Cameron's freshman numbers for the Baylor soccer team seem fictional or maybe something off a video game.

School records that haven't come close to being broken, she tallied 32 goals and 75 points (with 11 assists) while taking 140 shots during the Bears' inaugural season in 1996. Baylor hasn't scored that many goals ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" as a team ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" in four of the previous seven seasons.

"Hat tricks were kind of my thing back in high school, scoring three goals in a game, but it definitely wasn't as consistent as it was at Baylor," said Cameron, part of a 2015 Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame class that will be inducted Oct. 23. "I guess I just peaked when I came to Baylor."

Scoring double-digit goals in each of her last three seasons as well, Cameron ranks second all-time with 67 goals, 351 shots, 26 assists and 160 points.

"Honestly, I did think it was crazy. I kept thinking, 'When is this going to end?''' she said. "I just had such a fear of failure, because you really didn't know what to expect. The upperclassmen were club players and hadn't played against any of these teams. So, I think we just all had a fear of failure. That drove us to play like every game was going to be our last. We kept getting better and better, and it never did end. Every game was better than the one before."

A Tulsa, Okla., native who grew up going to Randy Waldrum's camps at the University of Tulsa, Cameron followed Waldrum and was part of the program's inaugural recruiting class in 1996 that included 2012 Hall of Fame inductee Courtney Saunders.

"I just knew he was a really good coach and had a good reputation," Cameron said of Waldrum, who went on to win two national championships at Notre Dame. "That's initially what attracted me to Baylor. And then once I got here, I just had a really good feeling about it. I had a good feeling that they were putting a really good effort into supporting the program and wanting us to be successful."

No one could have predicted what the Bears or Cameron were able to do that first year. While she ranked third nationally in goals scored and earned second-team All-Big 12 honors, Baylor posted an unbelievable 17-3-1 record with its only losses coming against top-10 teams.

"You really didn't know what it was going to be like until you play the first game," said Cameron, who scored a school-record five goals in a 12-2 win over Pittsburgh in the '96 opener. "None of us knew we were going to click the way we did. And I'm sure if you talked to anyone on that team, they would talk about our chemistry. There was just something special about that group of girls. There's no way that Randy could have hand-picked a team that had the chemistry we had."

In year three, while the team was still dressing in the Ferrell Center and driving over to Betty Lou Mays Field for the games, the Bears pulled off the unfathomable feat of winning the school's first Big 12 championship in any sport.

They went into the final two games with a shot at the title, but lost goalkeeper Dawn Greathouse with a torn ACL in a 3-0 win over Iowa State and had to play ninth-ranked Nebraska with a freshman in the net.

"When we lost Dawn, I think everybody else kicked it into another gear," said Cameron, who passed to Saunders for the only goal in a 1-0, title-clinching win. "Megan (Crona), the goalkeeper, she was phenomenal that game, making saves like I had never seen her make."

Sidelined the next year by a torn ACL, Cameron returned in 2000 and scored 11 of the team's 30 goals in a 10-win season under new coach Nick Cowell.

"It was very difficult, especially with Courtney, because we had played so well together and we wanted to finish together," Cameron said. "The only positive we could even come up with is she got to be the star for her senior year and then I was the leading scorer the next year. I loved playing with those girls that were a year younger than me, but it wasn't quite the same."

Returning to her hometown after earning her undergraduate degree in December 2000, Cameron eventually added a nursing degree from the University of Tulsa and a master's degree from Oklahoma.

She has a 4-year-old daughter, Harper, and is getting remarried Nov. 3 to Tulsa surgeon Brent Nossaman. Six days after the Hall of Fame induction banquet, the couple is leaving for St. Lucia for a destination wedding.

"It's kind of a busy time," she said. "I basically get to come home and pack."

On her Hall of Fame induction, Cameron said "I didn't even know (the Hall of Fame) existed" until Greathouse and Saunders were elected in 2011 and '12, respectively.

"You're just hoping that they haven't forgotten about you, that you still have some sort of impact at the university," Cameron said. "Once you graduate and you finish playing, your soccer career is done. But I guess I was hoping at some point I would be (inducted). It was just really exciting to hear." Joining Cameron in the 2015 Hall of Fame class are football players Tom Muecke and Ed Marsh, basketball's Terry Black and Danielle Crockrom, golfer Jimmy Walker, track's Bayano Kamani and Benedikt Dorsch from men's tennis.

The banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, at the Ferrell Center. Tickets are $50 each and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at tammy_hardin@baylor.edu.

Print Friendly Version