2025 Hall of Fame Feature: Cara Walls

Cara Walls was shopping at her neighborhood Target when a call to her cell phone caught her unaware. At the other end of the connection was Chris McIntosh, the University of Wisconsin athletic director, with some surprising news.

Walls listened intently as he told her that she was one of 12 inductees in the UW Athletic Hall of Fame.

Walls, a women’s soccer standout for the Badgers from 2011 to ’14, who finished her career as the No. 2 goal-scorer in program history, found herself tearing up.

“I was honestly super surprised and shocked,” she said. “I was just kind of standing there in the middle of the store, and I got a little bit emotional thinking about all the hard work and how honored I am to be considered for this.”

Walls, from Wauwatosa, led the Badgers in goal-scoring all four years, including 14 as a senior, which stands as the fourth-best total in program history. She finished with 42 overall, five behind Kari Maijala, who was inducted into the UW Hall of Fame in 2016.

“She was so talented,” Wisconsin coach Paula Wilkins said of Walls. “I love Cara. I’m so happy she has this opportunity. I really enjoyed my time with her.”

Walls played on Wisconsin teams that won 51 of 83 total matches and claimed the Big Ten Conference tournament title in 2014. She was named to the all-league first team for the regular season as well as the conference tourney as a senior.

Following her senior year, Walls became the first UW player to be chosen for the National Women’s Soccer League in 2015. She played for the Chicago franchise for 2½ years before moving to Germany for one season.

Upon returning stateside, Walls obtained her master’s degree in architecture from UW-Milwaukee, this after getting an undergraduate degree in environmental science and urban design from UW.

Before she became a teammate of Walls in Chicago, Michele Dalton was a senior all-Big Ten first-team goaltender for Wisconsin in 2011 when she got a measure of what kind of teammate Walls was.

“A great person,” Dalton said.

Dalton, who recently returned to Wisconsin as an assistant for Wilkins, said Walls deserves to be a Hall of Famer.

“It’s not an easy thing to earn,” Dalton said. “It’s kind of an exclusive group. For her to be able to be recognized is pretty special. I’m just happy for her.”

Wilkins said she recruited Walls because she had a diverse, distinctive skill set.

“She could score goals. She could beat people off the dribble. She was dynamic with the ball. Her movement, her intelligence in the front half of the field, was very good,” Wilkins said.

Walls said it took her a while to get acclimated with her place on the roster as well as the expectations that came with her high-profile role on the team. The process began during preseason camp, when fitness workouts and strength training took precedence.

“There were a lot of workouts where no one touched a ball,” Walls said. “Going through those practices and learning discipline and how to put the work in every single day was very important. When you do that, anything is possible in life.

“As I got older, things began to really click for me. I started to buy into the culture that Paula was teaching to us. Just the Badger mindset really started to click for me. A lot of people are talented going into school, but when you match it with the hard work and you figure out a rhythm that works for you...”

Walls was a junior when Rose Lavelle was recruited to Madison and immediately began to make a name for herself as a playmaking wunderkind. Lavelle wound up being a first-team all-Big Ten choice for four consecutive seasons and was a two-time first-team All-American before becoming a mainstay for the U.S. Women’s National Team that won the World Cup in 2019 and an Olympic gold medal in 2024.

Wilkins said there was a tremendous chemistry between Walls and Lavelle.

“There was a great connection,” Wilkins said. “Teams couldn’t focus on one — just one — and I think that opened up the ability of the other to be successful.”

BEST OF THREE

One: Wilkins, the UW coach since 2007, said Walls was one of her top-10 favorite players at Wisconsin. “Cara’s personality was pretty unique, and it was almost perfect for being a forward,” Wilkins said. “She was very even-keeled. Sometimes they’re very animated, but she was very calm. If she missed something, it wasn’t like she was going to be panicked about it. She had this quiet confidence about her, so she never got frazzled. If you were hard on her, she’d just bear down and do what she needed to do. She thrived in the big moments.”

Two: Walls is the first player from the Wilkins era to be added to the UW Athletic Hall of Fame and the fourth women’s soccer product overall, joining Maijala, Karen Lunda in 2012, and Heather Taggert in 2001.

Three: Walls said Wilkins impacted her life by injecting confidence into it. “She had a lot of faith in me as a player and put me in good positions to succeed,” Walls said. “Knowing that your coach has that type of confidence in you really helps you as a player.”