Sometimes, the motivation you give yourself is no match for what someone else can do.

For UNLV senior soccer player Lily Sender, the crossroads of her career came after her sophomore season, when she was told flat out she wasn’t good enough to play.

“Basically I was told I wasn’t going to make it by people and my coach,” said Sender, a 2013 graduate of St. Andrew’s Priory. “At first, it hurt, but I decided to keep working hard through the end of the year and then reevaluate everything.

“At the end of the year, I said, ‘No, I’m going to stick around.’ I wanted to prove everyone wrong.”

Sender received tangible evidence Monday that she had done just that. Just two years removed from appearing in only one match, Sender was named the Mountain West Conference offensive player of the year for the Rebels (15-3-2, 8-1-2), who last Friday won their first regular-season conference championship since 2007.

Sender recorded the program’s first hat trick in a 4-2 win over Nevada to clinch the title and tied the school’s single-season scoring record with 14 goals. She also has seven assists this season, breaking the points record of 31 set in 2010.

“I would say it’s just taken a lot of hard work,” Sender said. “I’ve had a lot my friends and teammates supporting me, coming out with me in the morning to get extra touches on the ball and push me to go out and run more, and I couldn’t have done it without all of them.”

Sender is one of three seniors from Hawaii on the team, which plays in the semifinals of the MWC tournament on Thursday.

Moanalua graduate Isabelle Delgado, who switched from forward to defender halfway through the season, says Sender has been a role model not just to her, but the rest of her Rebels teammates.

“How she has transformed from her freshman season to her senior year has been an inspiration,” Delgado said. “I don’t think even she knows what has happened, but she has worked so hard and changed herself into one of the fittest players on our team.”

“She’s killing it,” added Mililani alumna Brittney Gideon, who was club teammates with Sender in high school. “I think she realized it was her senior year and her last chance to really accomplish something and she decided she wanted to train hard and push herself as hard as she can and it’s worked out.”

Gideon, who has appeared in 78 matches with 26 starts, might never have played soccer at UNLV without Sender’s help.

A UNLV coach attended one of Gideon and Sender’s club matches to watch Sender play. Gideon noticed her teammate was unusually quiet and a little shaken on the field.

“Lily really wanted to go to UNLV and I wasn’t really looking at any schools,” Gideon said. “Lily was all nervous because the UNLV coach was there and I told her it was fine and not to worry.

“After the game, (the coach) ended up talking to both of us and really I ended up getting recruited because Lily was getting recruited.”

Delgado, who has appeared in 67 matches with 20 starts in college, played for a different club team but was on the same recruiting trip as Sender when they first met. She met Gideon at her first practice in college and the three have been close ever since, carrying the Hawaii torch together on the UNLV team.

“I’m definitely proud to say that I’m from Hawaii and being with two other girls that are from Hawaii and seeing Lily get player of the year and she’s from the same island as me, it’s a really cool thing,” Delgado said. “I’m proud of the players we’ve become.”

UNLV was picked to finish eighth in the MWC in a preseason poll and hasn’t won a match in the conference tournament since 2012.

The Rebels started the season winning their first four matches. It made all three players believe they could accomplish something special this season.

“That was the start of it all, I guess,” Sender said. “We have such amazing players on our team and the talent is so unreal that we knew coming in we were going to be a good team.”

UNLV closed the regular season undefeated in its last 10 matches (8-0-2). Sender not only delivered a hat trick to clinch the conference title, but scored the golden goal in a 1-0 overtime win over Utah State in the previous match.

She has scored six goals in her last four matches and started the streak finding the back of the net twice in a 4-1 win over Colorado College. Before the game, assistant coach J.J. Wozniak gave her a piece of advice she’ll never forget.

“I remember (Wozniak) coming up to me before our game (against Colorado College) and asking me if I felt any pressure at all,” Sender said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I am. I haven’t done this well ever,’ and he told me the reason I was doing well was that I was working hard.

“‘Relax and play your game because you’re a good player. This isn’t luck happening to you. Just play your game.’”