Makayla Cihlar '25 Recruiting Profile

Hello! My name is Makayla Cihlar and I am a junior at Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland.  Outside of Good Counsel, I play my club soccer for Pipeline's ECNL team. Pipeline is based in Baltimore, MD.  I primarily play striker and attacking center mid but, also, occasionally play wing and defending center mid. I have been playing soccer since I was in elementary school and have fallen in love with all aspects of the game. Soccer is special to me because of the relationships and bonds that I have built through the years with my teammates. 

A quick history of my club soccer career. Beginning in 2nd grade I was on the top Bethesda Soccer Club (BSC) team up until I left their ECNL 1 team with several teammates in late fall of 2020. Although it was very difficult to leave to BSC, the environment was no longer right for me. My teammates and I went to FCGB which is a small club coached by former Serbian professional soccer players and was made up of a roster that is composed of 60% former ECNL players. In 2022 we won the Maryland State Cup and were ranked as the top team in the country for a number of weeks on got soccer. While rankings such as these certainly have their flaws, I am proud of what we built at FCGB.  In the Spring of 2023 I decided I needed to go back to ECNL to play against better competition and, in May, I joined Pipeline's top or national ECNL team. Additionally, Good Counsel is regularly ranked among the top women high school soccer teams in the country. In the fall of 2023 we won the WCAC championship, will likely be the Washington Post top ranked team and I was named honorable mention on the all conference team. I was also named a captain for next year. 

In addition to soccer, I also played basketball at the AAU level through middle school and was the starting point guard on Good Counsel's JV team as a freshman but I am now solely focused on soccer.  I have a 3.75 (unweighted) grade point average at Good Counsel and am in a number of honors courses. Academics are extremely important to me and I am looking to continue my soccer career at a college with both strong academics and a strong women's soccer team.