Carin Leslie Jennings-Gabarra (née Jennings; born January 9, 1965) is an American retired soccer forward.

[1] Archived November 15, 2006, at the Wayback Machine She graduated from UCSB in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in business management.

[3] Jennings and defender Joy Fawcett both were members of the Manhattan Beach club women's soccer team Ajax in the late 1980s and early 1990s and routinely played at Columbia Park in Torrance, California.

[6] Jennings-Gabarra's fame rests on her achievements with the United States women's national soccer team.

The term, coined by the Chinese media during the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup, included two other prolific scorers, April Heinrichs and Michelle Akers.

Of those three players, Akers scored ten goals at the World Cup to claim the Golden Boot, while Jennings-Gabarra added six as the tournament's second-leading scorer.

Carin Jennings-Gabarra competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, as well as the 1991 and 1995 editions of the FIFA Women's World Cup.

Jennings-Gabarra is renowned for her remarkable ball control, imagination, dribbling skills and feints on the wing, as well as her ability to create chances out of nothing.

[10][11] Also an effective goalscorer, she struck a 23-minute hat-trick against Germany to put the United States 3–0 ahead in the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup semi-final.

The Los Angeles Times reported that "Carin Jennings, the ponytailed winger from Palos Verdes, tore the Germans to shreds".

In 1999 Assistant coach Lauren Gregg hailed Jennings-Gabarra's performance against Germany as the single greatest ever by an American player.

[12] Jennings-Gabarra epitomizes the speed, fitness, and mental strength coach Anson Dorrance demanded of his players.

That year, Westmont College, located in Santa Barbara, California, hired her as its women's soccer coach.

In 1993, the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, hired Gabarra as its women's soccer coach.