Up at the top of the list of Penn lacrosse players, senior midfielder Anna Brandt sits alone after scoring her 149th career goal against Temple and becoming the program’s all-time leading scorer.

But the road to this moment — to the program record, to an All-American status, to potentially another Ivy League title — didn’t just start when she got to college. Nor does it end now that the record is broken.

For Brandt, it’s never been about the stats or the records or the rankings. It’s been about the process.

The process started for her back home in Maryland. Brandt played for the best club program in the country — M&D Black — but she was often “the last kid off the bench.” She wasn’t the star player; she was barely in the rotation.

“I had to fall in love with the process more than the result,” Brandt said. “Since I was never really motivated by those goals and things because I wasn’t getting them, I was able to block that out and focus on the process — focus on getting better.”

She committed to play for West Point, but the plans fell through and left Brandt in danger of not playing collegiate lacrosse. There was even a point where she thought she’d go to community college instead. But during a gap year, she found her way to Penn.

“Thinking back, it was mostly just gratitude and a pinch-me moment when I put on the uniform because I didn’t even think it was a possibility, and here I am at a top-ranked program getting a chance to play,” Brandt said, reflecting back on freshman year.

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She was a starter from the first game. And in the second game, she scored her first collegiate goal in a nationally ranked matchup against Johns Hopkins.

But freshman year had its growing pains. Besides her adjustments at an individual level on and off the field, the team struggled. In the 2022 season, Penn finished 6-9 overall and 3-4 in conference play — missing out on an Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament appearance for the first time in over a decade.

“It was definitely tough because it was an entirely new team, and we weren’t super experienced because even the juniors and seniors had only played one or two games,” Brandt said. 

For those upperclassmen, COVID-19 restrictions canceled the rest of their 2020 season, and the Ivy League opted out of the 2021 season.

But that was all just fuel for the fire.

Things changed drastically during her sophomore season. Penn went undefeated in the Ivy League. And Brandt herself had a bona fide breakout year, going from scoring 24 goals in a season to 54 — putting her at 78 career goals — and was named the Ivy League Midfielder of the Year.

“I would credit that to the offense and the other players out there and the team. I don’t think that’s really a reflection of anything I did. I think that was just us getting better as a team,” Brandt said. “When you gel more as an offense, when you get to learn each other’s tendencies, you get better looks at the net [and] you get better looks that you want. They’re setting me up more for opportunities that I didn’t get freshman year.”

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Because of the team’s phenomenal season, Brandt had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of hers: playing in the NCAA tournament.

That May, Penn traveled up to Boston where they beat UConn in the first round of the tournament. The team made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament, but it lost 9-7 against Boston College. But despite losing in the second round, the experience meant the world to Brandt.

“Growing up all through elementary school, middle school — that is what you see on TV. Those are the pros. Those are the best of the best,” Brandt said. “When I really think about it, [it] makes me pretty emotional to think about [because] … just to look back and see how far you’ve come too is just awesome.”

One year later, in her junior season, Brandt became just the 15th player in program history to break the 100-goal mark. Her 100th goal came in an upset win against No. 1 Maryland — a program she grew up idolizing.

She scored 60 goals total in her junior year — only three behind the single-season record set just one year prior by her teammate, then-senior attacker Niki Miles. And in the Ivy League tournament semifinal, she scored eight goals for the tournament record in a game.

Penn earned another berth to the NCAA tournament in 2024. It hosted its first two matchups in Franklin Field and advanced to the quarterfinal against No. 1 Northwestern, which was led by the NCAA all-time leading scorer Izzy Scane.

A few months later, she met Scane again — but as a teammate.

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In November 2024, Brandt was named to the United States Women’s National Team training roster to decide the roster for the 2026 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship in Japan. She was flown out to Florida for the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association Presidents Cup on Nov. 22-24, 2024. Her idols became her teammates, as she got to compete alongside the stars of the lacrosse world.

“It’s so cool to play the sport with so many talented athletes who have the same love, who share that love, and just have really dedicated their lives to the sport. It’s just really beautiful when it’s played at such a high level,” Brandt said.

She attended another training camp in Boston this past January, and she has another training camp approaching in June back home in Maryland. From there, the U.S. National Team roster will be finalized — and Brandt could be one of the names on the list.

“The dream keeps on going,” Brandt said. “Putting on a USA uniform is a top-two moment of my life.”

Brandt returned from her time wearing the red, white, and blue ready for her final campaign with the Red and Blue. She came back needing just 11 goals to break the program scoring record. But she didn’t even know it herself. Someone else told her just a few days before the season that she was on the doorstep of history.

“I don’t really look at stats,” Brandt admitted with a laugh. “But I just find that I play my best lacrosse when I block out the noise … whether that’s rankings or stats. I think it can be a really limiting mindset when you only focus on ‘this many points’ or ‘this many goals.’”

It’s all part of her mindset, part of the process that brought her to that position.

It has never been about the first goal or the 100th goal or the 149th goal or the ones to come. It’s been about her personal growth, overcoming what’s in front of her and chasing the dreams that she once thought were out of reach. It’s been about playing alongside her team, supporting the rest of her teammates and growing with them so that they can chase titles and greatness together.

The record has been broken. But the road isn’t over.