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Kingston makes impact at Middlebury College
Given that Charlotte native Lindsay Kingston had little confidence in her ability to play collegiate soccer at any level, her fledgling career at perennial NCAA Division III power Middlebury College is going quite nicely.
"To be quite honest, I didn't think I could play at the college level," said Kingston, a sophomore defender for the 6-1-1 Panthers.
Yet Kingston has started every game - 24 straight prior to Tuesday's game - since she donned Middlebury's blue-and-white uniform.
A travel coach for her Far Post club team pushed Kingston to consider college and Panther coach Peter Kim was asked to attend a few of her games in order to assess her ability and to recommend the type of college program Kingston should pursue.
As it happened, Kingston's Middlebury team had a slew of seniors that year and he knew he would face a major restocking of the Panthers' roster the next fall. Instead of merely offering suggestions to Kingston, Kim urged her to attend Middlebury.
She's started every game since she stepped on campus.
"I knew they were going to lose a lot of good defenders, but I also knew it was (Kim's) policy not to use a lot of freshmen," Kingston recalled.
So when she was in the starting lineup for the 2010 season's opener, "I was really shocked. It was the most terrifying experience of my life."
Her days with Far Post and at CVU had prepared her better than she had expected. As a Redhawk, she played basketball her first two years before dropping the sport in favor of concentrating on soccer and spending more time on the ski slopes. She played varsity soccer sparingly as a sophomore but took on bigger roles the next two seasons.
"We lost in the quarters, the semis, and the finals to the same team each year, Burlington, unfortunately," Kingston said. "That's still a pretty sore point."
At Middlebury, she was just one of a number of very good freshmen. However, she was playing a position that had been particularly devastated by graduation.
"It was kind of the luck of the draw I came in at the right time. One year later, we probably would have had five or six freshmen competing for a couple of positions," she said.
"She was thrown into the fire as soon as she arrived at Middlebury," said Kim. "She had to learn a new system and style in a hurry, but she's the type of person who thrives on big challenges.
"She'll admit that it wasn't always pretty early on," said Kim. "Wherever she was lacking technically or tactically, she made up for it with her work rate and commitment to achieving excellence. She has put in the time and energy to making herself an impact player. Not much time has passed since that nervous local kid stepped onto the field down in Boston for her first collegiate match, yet already Lindsay Kingston has managed to transform herself into a key player on a talented team."
That first season, she played a wing defense position, moving back into more of a central role this year. "I have to command the field and be the eyes for all the players," she said. "I love it back there."
Even as a freshman, she displayed one unusual trait: A willingness to direct others in the heat of play. "I'm pretty talkative on the field, whether it's good or bad - usually good - and I try to keep them up," Kingston said.
"It did surprise some of the seniors, who weren't used to it."
Off the field, Kingston is renewing her association with the 52 Kids Foundation run by former CVU and UVM star John Koerner. The foundation supports a number of projects in Uganda, which Kingston visited as a CVU student. She is also involved with Global Medicine at Middlebury, supporting a foundation Rwanda.
An environmental and biology major, she plans to travel and perhaps pursue a nursing program after she graduates. That's two years down the road and she has plenty of soccer to play before then.
Contact Ted Ryan with collegiate student-athlete information at TedRyanVT@aol.com.
