LAKELAND, FL -- Goals can be hard to come by in soccer.

But for Uchenna Kanu, it's not a question of if she will score a goal but how many?

Scoring goals has become as routine as brushing her teeth.

"Her ability to finish is at a very high level in the female game," Southeastern coach Randy Belli said.

She's scored 40 goals in just 16 games, the most by any collegiate soccer player, man or woman, in any division.

"I didn't know that but that's awesome," Kanu said. "Getting used to scoring goals is a part of me now."

So is her home country of Nigeria.

"Whenever I play I think of my friends and family back home, people that were there for me when I first started," she said. 

Uchenna and her family didn't start with much. But whatever they did have was all lost when her house burned down, leaving them homeless for nearly a year.

"I think I was 15. It was a really bad moment. We just prayed to God to help us out." But before things got better, they got worse.

"My Dad passed away in the process. He had kind of like a heart attack. He couldn't deal with all the problems and got sick and couldn't make it."

A few years later, Uchenna would leave Nigeria and move to Lakeland all by herself in 2016. Ever since then, she's been a goal-scoring machine for the Fire.

But all those goals pale in comparison to the two goals she always has on her mind.

"My first is to get a degree here before going to play pro and be able to help my friends and family back home through this game of soccer. I just want to use this game to make a change back home and make things different."

"Absolutely she's gonna be a pro," Belli sad. "There's no doubt in anyone's mind she's going to play professionally but after her pro career is over she needs to have that degree so she can go to work and make a difference for her whole family back home. I think her whole family is counting on her."