While I see your point about percent and agree 100% that you are correct that 100% is 100 out of 100. In the real world of how things work, in an engineering sense we often rate machines, equipment, and yes even people for what they can do when running at full operating capacity and call that 100%, but often things can operate at higher capacities than they are rated for (sometimes this is bad think nuclear reactor or race car above red line!).
Sometimes people dig down and find a little more to give and put for effort beyond what others do. In this case I was applying the effort, relative to another quantity, namely the effort others might normally give as basis of my use of percent rather than a rating of 1 to 100 on a scale.
Both teams made many great plays , but since my expression was unclear and resulted in some confusion let me clearify by saying that she made an outstanding effort, that was impressive, and was worthy of a highlight clip just by itself.