Junior captain fully recovered from early season knee injury
By MIKE CONNOLLY
Associate Sports Editor
PISCATAWAY, N.J.
Sometimes you don't realize how good something is until it's gone.
Irish fans learned the hard way how important Kelly Lindsey when the junior captain went down with a knee injury against North Carolina in the first game of the season. Without Lindsey, the defense looked disorganized as the Irish lost a 2-1 lead late in the game.
"You definitely notice a difference when she is not in the game," Irish goalkeeper LaKeysia Beene said about Lindsey. "Early in the season she couldn't get in the game because of her knee but when she gets in you notice a difference in the back."
Lindsey frequently draws the job of defending the top player for the opposing team. Over the weekend in the Big East championships, she led an Irish defense that held the most dangerous scorer in women's soccer, Kelly Smith, scoreless in Notre Dame's 5-0 semifinal win over Seton Hall. Every time Smith touched the ball, Lindsey was on her and stopped her from getting any good looks at the goal.
Lindsey relishes her role as Notre Dame's top defender.
"I definitely take pride in that [covering the opponents top players]," she said. "I think my job is to step up in front and let [Jen] Grubb sweep in behind. So I always seem to get stuck with them [the best players]."
While three of Lindsey's teammates — Grubb, Kara Brown and Vanessa Pruzinsky — were honored by the Big East, Lindsey was left off the post season awards list — a glaring omission according to Irish head coach Randy Waldrum.
"She is critical," Waldrum said. "She is certainly one of our top defenders. I am disappointed that she didn't make All-Big East.
"I think that was strictly because she was out at the beginning of the year because of her injury," he continued. "There's no way you can. She is not an all-conference or a regional All-American type player for us."
Lindsey, however, is not concerned with her lack of recognition and doubts whether or not she is capable of earning postseason accolades.
"I don't think I'll have the chance to make those kind of teams so I just play for the team [Notre Dame]," she said. "If we can win the national championship, that's enough for me."
While Lindsey doubts her chances of winning postseason awards, Waldrum has no doubt that she would have made all-conference had she remained healthy.
"I think if she would have been 100 percent healthy at the beginning of the season, it might have made a difference," he said. "I think it was more to do with the fact that she wasn't 100 percent at the beginning of the season more than anything."
Besides her health, one of the reasons that Lindsey might have been left off the postseason awards role was her lack of offensive statistics. While Grubb scored nine goals for the Irish and Brown led the team with 14 assists, Lindsey registered only two shots on goal — spending most of her time hanging back on defense. While Lindsey would like to get more involved in the offense, she understands that her role is on defense.
"Everyone wants to score," she said. "So I am definitely a person who would like to score but my job is on defense."
Her teammates appreciate her defensive talents.
"Kelly sticks hard tackle after hard tackle," Beene said. "She is the player we rely on when the game is on the line."
Coming back from the early-season injury was a tough road but Lindsey is finally back, and opposing offenses are finding that Lindsey might be the best defender that nobody says anything about.
"It was rough in the beginning, especially getting taken out in the North Carolina game," she said. "But I am feeling stronger than ever and finally peaking at the right time."
With the NCAA tournament starting for the Irish next weekend, Notre Dame couldn't ask for a better time for its best defender to be playing at the top of her game.
All Sports Stories for Monday, November 8, 1999
