He Shoots. He Scores? From Soccer to Lacrosse, Goalkeepers Get in on the Act The ball, kicked routinely by the goalkeeper for the Everton soccer team, soared through the night sky at Goodison Park in Liverpool, England, bounced once - and weirdly - and landed in the opposition's net. From roughly 100 yards, a goalkeeper had scored a goal. In a soccer game. In one of the world's best professional leagues. The goalkeeper, Tim Howard, declined to celebrate. What he had done was remarkable - he understood that. But it was also embarrassing. He evidently understood that, too. It had happened to him. "It's not a nice place to be," Howard told reporters in Liverpool after the game, referring to his counterpart, Bolton's Adam Bogdan. I've been there - a long, long time ago. A goal such as Howard's - scored from a distance roughly the length of an American football field - had happened once before in the 20-year history of the English Premier League. Goals somewhat like it have been scored in other professional leagues, in college games and in recreational league games, too. But not often. And no one connected to those moments - the scorers, those scored upon, those there to witness them - tends to forget. Ever. Indeed, the list of goalies who scored their own goals in any sport - hockey, lacrosse - makes for an odd, enduring subcategory of rare athletic accomplishment. In the history of the N.H.L., for instance, 11 goalies have scored a goal. Of course, that has always happened once the opposing goalie has left the ice. No goalie has scored with their rival still manning his position, oversize pads, glove and stick at the ready. The first goalie to score a goal in a professional game was Michel Plasse of Kansas City in the Central Hockey League, who shot the puck the length of the ice into an empty net in the final minute against Oklahoma City on Feb. 21, 1971. "I was just trying to clear the puck out of there," said Plasse, who died in 2006. It was a hell of a shot! On six occasions when N.H.L. goaltenders have scored, the goalie got credit for the tally merely because he was the last to touch the puck before an opponent accidentally put it in his own net. "It was a cheesy goal," said Chris Mason of the Nashville Predators after being credited with such a goal in 2006. I don't even like counting one like that as a goal. But five other times, an N.H.L. goalie actually shot it all the way down the ice, à la Plasse. Ron Hextall of the Philadelphia Flyers was the first on Dec. 8, 1987, and the second during a playoff game on April 11, 1989. Evgeni Nabokov of the San Jose Sharks was the most recent, on March 10, 2002. Martin Brodeur of the Devils has been credited with two goals in his career. The first he shot into an empty net in a 1997 playoff game against his hometown Montreal Canadiens. "I was freaking out - it was unbelievable," Brodeur said. Goalies have scored at least 14 goals in the 24-year history of the National Lacrosse League and its predecessor, the Major Indoor Lacrosse League, the wintertime professional box lacrosse circuits whose games are played on the floors of ice hockey rinks. In each case, the ball was shot into an empty net. The glory of scoring as a goalie brims over on a lacrosse message board titled "Have You Ever Scored Playing Goal???" "I have done it once in a 4 year career - it was the most amazing thing I have ever done in my whole life," said a correspondent named CStan10GK. . "The best one was a side arm snipe from around midfield (indoor)," wrote another named Gardinerkeepa00, "the ball hit the other goalie in the dome and hit under the crossbar, I felt kinda bad, but it was sweet." "One look at me and you'll know I didn't run up the floor and score," said Pat O'Toole, who, with the Rochester Knighthawks, became the first goalie in the lacrosse league's history to score a regular-season goal, in 2001, and a playoff goal, in 2003, both on long shots into empty nets. O'Toole and other box lacrosse goalies wear about 50 pounds of protective equipment. But in a career spanning the 1960s and "70s, Buff MacCready, a goalie in the summertime Ontario box league, scored 15 goals, usually by hulking up the floor in full gear and joining the attack during regular play. He wound up with 608 career assists. It has happened only a handful of times in collegiate field lacrosse. But in those cases the goalie has run most of or all the way down the field and scored on the opposing goalie.