After she scored the game's first goal, Delran native Carli Lloyd dropped to her knees, slid to the sidelines, and threw her hands up in celebration, soon to be mobbed by her teammates.
The only problem? Some friends who went to Delran High School with the midfielder had no idea it was Lloyd who scored the goal for the U.S. in the women's soccer gold-medal game against Japan. They assumed it was forward Abby Wambach who put the cross from Alex Morgan into the back of the net.
But it was Lloyd, who seemingly came out of nowhere to head the ball in for a goal.
"I can't believe we didn't know Carli scored," Lloyd's friend since middle school, Karen Sweet, said during the first half of Thursday's gold-medal game in Wembley Stadium.
Once Sweet, her sisters Judy and Kathy, and her nieces saw the replay and realized it was Lloyd scoring, they celebrated all over again in Judy Buciorelli's house in Mount Laurel.
Lloyd's cousin Jamie Bula also thought it was Wambach.
"You watch the replay and she just snuck in there," Bula said.
Lloyd's second goal came in the 54th minute on a rocket that landed in the left corner of the net. Lloyd dribbled across the middle of the field and let the shot fly just before the top of the 18-yard line.
This time there was no doubt who scored, and Sweet and the rest of Lloyd's friends jumped off the couch, screaming and hugging each other. Laura Verzi-Aleszczyk, who previously trained with Lloyd, could barely contain her excitement. "Is this real life?" she said with a laugh.
And for the second straight Olympics, the Delran native scored the gold medal game-winner as the United States beat Japan, 2-1 Thursday. Lloyd scored the golden goal, the overtime game-winner, in 2008 in the 1-0 win over Brazil in Beijing.
"How could history repeat?" Sweet said. "She won the Olympics for the U.S.A. in 2008 and 2012. Nobody has accomplished something like this."
Then, just as everything subsided, they got the call from London. Giddy and excited, they put Lloyd on speakerphone. She told them she would be on Today on Friday with Wambagh and goalie Hope Solo.
There will be no mistaking her now.
