Girls soccer player of the year will stick to basketball in college

Published 7:09 am Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Kristi Kingma is hanging them up.

Jackson High School’s 2-1 season-ending loss to Bellarmine Prep in the first round of the 4A state soccer playoffs spelled the end for the senior forward who tallied 22 goals and eight assists this season and 67 goals and 37 assists over her four-year varsity career.

Kingma will never slip on shin guards or lace up cleats for a competitive soccer game again.

“It’s just weird — you kind of prepare yourself for this moment before the season starts,” she said. “But when it’s over, it kind of hits you. That’s what happened for me … I’ve grown up playing soccer and loved it for so long and to not have that anymore is a shock.”

But the loss to Bellarmine Prep represents a commencement, not a denouement in the athletic career of the 2007 Herald Girls Soccer Player of the Year.

Beginning next fall, Kingma will don the purple and gold of the University of Washington as a Husky athlete — on the basketball court at Bank of America Arena.

Despite all her success on the soccer pitch, Kingma spurned offers from UCLA, Seattle Pacific and a host of other schools Jackson soccer coach Michael Bartley wouldn’t tell her about to accept a basketball scholarship to the University of Washington.

“I think every person has a dream and mine was, ‘I wanna put on the uniform and play and be on the Husky court,’ ” she said.

She was recruited by multiple Division I schools for soccer and basketball, but no one offered her the chance to play both. That will be a big adjustment, according to her mother, Gail, a former distance runner at Seattle Pacific who qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials in the marathon in 1984, 1988 and 1992.

“She’s never been a kid who said, ‘I just want to do one sport,’” Gail Kingma said. “Gradually she knew she couldn’t do it, and at the end of the soccer season this year, when it was over, it was hard for her just to say ‘it’s over.’ It’s never been her personality to say ‘I want to be done.’ “

Kingma’s soccer career may be over, but basketball seems to be an apt choice for the 5-foot-10 point guard, who averaged 18.3 points per contest during a junior campaign in which the Timberwolves took eight place at the 4A state tournament.

That doesn’t mean Kingma won’t miss soccer, however.

“She loves soccer, she really does,” said her father, Gregg, himself a star basketball player at Anacortes High School and All-American at Seattle Pacific. “As she got older, she grew more into a basketball player’s body and all that, but I think soccer — she’s going to miss it.”

That’s not surprising, considering Kingma has played soccer since the age of 5. She even played select soccer for Snohomish United through her sophomore year of high school before giving it up when she decided she wanted to focus on basketball.

“I think part of the reason I’ve been able to handle (all the athletics) is because I’ve grown up with parents (where) there’s no other option,” Kristi Kingma said. “It’s just normal. I’ve never been around something where I don’t have something going on.”

Managing all the games, practice and travel has been a challenge for the Kingma clan, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We love it more than anything,” Gregg Kingma said, adding that this frenetic pace has been a staple of the Kingma family since Kristi was a fourth grader. “We’re usually not home on a weekend day at all.”

And even though the days of shuttling Kristi to and from games and practices are nearly over, her parents are far from being done. Kristi Kingma has four younger siblings who “all want to do the same thing,” according to Gail.

Brett, 14, is a freshman at Jackson; 11-year-old twins Dan and Kelli are in sixth grade, and Brooke, 10, is a fifth-grader. Five kids within six years of each other in age makes for some competitive times at the Kingma household, Kristi said.

“People are like, ‘Oh, it’s like the Brady Bunch’ — well kind of, except we don’t need a nanny, we need a referee,” Kristi Kingma said. “If after (a family game) only one person is crying, then it’s a success.”

Kingma’s competitiveness in athletics and at home simply belies her genuine concern for her teammates, according to Bartley.

“She’s a good friend and a great teammate,” Bartley said. “She inspires players to do well, not by screaming or yelling, but always caring about how everyone felt. She did her best for them. I’ve never seen a better teammate than Kristi Kingma.”

And then there’s her soccer-playing ability that makes Bartley call her the best player ever to step on the field during his tenure.

“She was a great clinical finisher of the ball,” he said, adding that there’s no doubt in his mind Kingma could have starred on the college soccer field. “She was phenomenal in her ability to score goals.”

Kingma’s future in basketball is bright, but as she heads to UW next fall, a part of her will still miss the challenge of playing soccer.

“Soccer has been a big part of my life,” she said. “I’m just going to miss being out on that field.”