If you played any kind of sports at all in your life, you know Lindsey Poulsen, and you didn’t have be the star player on your high school team to comprehend the personality type. ADVERTISING If you played any kind
If you played any kind of sports at all in your life, you know Lindsey Poulsen, and you didn’t have be the star player on your high school team to comprehend the personality type.
Even if you didn’t play organized sports, you know her type, she was the one you wanted on your side because she was the best player in the neighborhood. She knew it and you knew it. Everyone knew it.
“Tenacious,” said former University of Hawaii at Hilo soccer coach Marc Miranda when asked if a word comes to mind that sums up the approach Lindsey Poulsen took to soccer. “It started with work ethic, she was the most fit player on our team, easily. She was diligent about conditioning, I mean she really understood the value of hard work and how to make it pay off.
“We had these fitness tests we would do and one of them was a 2-mile run,” he said. “Understand, this is a group of college-aged women’s soccer players, all of them came to us thinking they were in good shape, they’re all athletes, but in the 2-mile? Lindsey lapped all but three or four of her teammates, she lapped a couple of them twice.
“She was tremendous,” Miranda said, “she lifted us up and carried us.”
Lindsey Poulsen was the player every coach wants on his or her team and now it’s the right time for the rest of us — all of us — to join her team.
Over the weekend, former Vulcans soccer assistant coach Terry Yamane organized a youth soccer camp for the purpose of raising funds for her in her fight with ovarian cancer. Every penny is helpful, but if you didn’t participate in the camp, all you really need to do is understand who she is and let your heart take you where you need to go.
Poulsen graduated in 2014 and is currently living on Oahu, doing work from home for an accounting firm while she receives chemotherapy and waits for an operation Aug. 16 in her battle with cancer. She shaved her head when the hair started falling out, her attitude has been close to perfect and everything her medical team has done so far has worked.
“I’m doing pretty well, better than I thought I’d do,” she said the other day in a telephone conversation, sounding upbeat, confident and almost giddy. “I was terrified about the hair, I thought it would be a big issue, but when it came to it, I was like, ‘Ah, who cares, it’ll just grow back.’”
No wigs, no social issues, she most often wears a baseball cap and doesn’t reserve much time or energy for what people think.
“I realized the other day, you never really know what the other person is thinking,” she said. “I was worried about people looking at me and thinking, ‘She’s sick,’ but we really have no clue what others are thinking and it really doesn’t matter much.”
What others might or might not think doesn’t matter much. What you do matters a lot.
Lindsey Poulsen was the first recruit for the new staff of Miranda and Yamane back in 2010 when they were looking for goal scorers and both were surprised when Poulsen showed real interest.
“She came for a visit and loved it,” Miranda said. “I checked back with her and she said she was still interested, ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming,’ is what she told me and I realized when she said something, she meant it.”
Gene Okamura, UH Hilo’s interim soccer director, got to coach Poulsen for two years, and yes, they were memorable for all the right reasons.
“She was a coach’s dream,” Okamura said. “Probably the most selfless, hardest working player I’ve seen, men or women, boys or girls, whatever. She was that player, when, if you were in a 0-0 draw, or maybe you were down 1-0 with 15 minutes left, it was like, ‘We got Lindsey, we got a chance,’ she was the one that gave everyone hope, and absolute team leader and everyone on the team knew it.”
Maybe, if you didn’t play organized sports, you might not grasp the full meaning of the leader, the captain. But even if you just played Ring-Around-The-Rosey you knew the Lindsey Poulsen type.
“Maybe some people don’t understand how important her kind of player is to a team, but the word would be tenacious,” Miranda said. “She was an absolute goal scorer and she demanded the ball at times, vocally, out on the field. It was tough at time for her teammates who weren’t used to it, but every coach, I mean every single soccer coach, wants a player who leads like that and wants to be the one they go to when the game is on the line. You want that and sometimes you go through long stretches without it and the team just seems adrift.
“It was never like that with Lindsey, she wouldn’t allow it to happen.”
She knows who she is, and why.
“I know I could get on (teammates’) nerves at times,” Poulsen said, “but when you’re in the moment, when you see that opening and you’re yelling, it doesn’t sound so friendly, but you’re trying to communicate.
“Growing up in the Bay Area, that’s just how I was taught to play the game,” she said. “My approach was to go all out, to do everything I possibly could to win, I took it seriously.”
The good news is, her approach hasn’t changed, it’s just a different game, one she expects to win.
Go to ilovelindseypoulsen for the Go Fund Me account that has almost reached its goal.
