GoHeels Exclusive: Soccer is Still the Same Game but Kingman Is a New Athlete

By Molly Green, UNC Athletic Communications Student Assistant

Annie Kingman led the University of North Carolina women's soccer team to the NCAA College Cup during her junior year in 2016. She led the Tar Heels in assists with eight during the season, ranked second in points with 18 and tied for second on the team in goals scored with four. That well-bonded, underdog team pushed through to the national semifinals in Kingman's hometown, San Jose, Calif.

"It was a dream come true for me because I got to go home and play in front of all of my family, friends and high school teachers. It was so cool to have the experience to go play in my hometown with that team" Kingman says about the team's trip to the College Cup.

They were not a team of star players. They were a team of hard-working, dedicated athletes who worked together to achieve their goals. The team continues to look back on their 2016 expedition as an incredibly special journey.

"Annie is a natural born leader. People have so much respect for her because she does everything the right way. Whether it's school or soccer, she is always so disciplined." says Annie's best friend on the team, Jessie Scarpa, a fifth-year senior from Lakeland, Fla.

While playing in the College Cup was a dream come true for Kingman, it posed more challenges than expected. Kingman played through that season with a bone spur in her Achille's Heel. It took everything she had to persevere and continue to lead her team on the field, but it resulted in unrelenting pain.

"Every step felt like a stabbing pain into my Achille's, so that made it extremely difficult for me to play. In that 2016 year, I'd come out 25 minutes early for warm up to start running because it would take that long to get it loosened up so that I could play without such severe pain," Kingman reveals about her injury.

Kingman didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to play in the College Cup and continue this journey with the teammates she adored. The season's great success made playing through the pain feel worth it to Kingman. Unfortunately, that sensation didn't last long.

Kingman admits that "it got to the point where it was too painful to play. I wasn't enjoying playing."

The following season in 2017, Kingman was forced to make one of the most difficult decisions of her career. "I ultimately had to decide if it was worth pushing through the pain and maybe not playing in too many games and just be part of the team or if I should get the surgery and be out a whole year. It was hard to make that choice because I'm always about plans and here is what I'm going to do when and it really threw everything off," Kingman says as she explains her 2017 season dilemma.
Kingman had surgery to remove the bone spur October 11, 2017. She was red-shirted her senior year.

The surgery was successful and her rehabilitation process went smoothly. It was only a matter of weeks after her surgery that she was able to run again, and she was back doing light touches to the soccer ball by the end of the year.

Playing without the severe pain was so freeing to Kingman. She said "it kind of made me sad that I didn't get the surgery sooner because I played so long on pain."
Not being on the field with her teammates was the most difficult part. In an athletic sense, she went from having it all to having nothing but she found a way to inject her leadership into the team during her senior season.

"Being a red-shirt is definitely hard because you see your team doing well and you want to be a part of that and when they're suffering you want to be a part of that too because that's your team," Kingman says.

Kingman was elected captain just before she decided to get the surgery, another complication for Kingman. She wasn't sure how to be a captain and lead her team without playing alongside her teammates on the field. Kingman found ways to focus on encouraging the team by doing things such as decorating the bus before a long road trip.

Additionally, she took the opportunity to search for "who is struggling a bit, who needs some words of encouragement, who needs to be told they're doing well, who needs to get extra advice or direction. Being able to step back and observe the team from afar was an interesting and helpful leadership experience."

Through her experiences, Kingman's perspective on the game has changed. Her first few years on the Tar Heel squad were rooted in winning and competing. She focused her energy on playing time, scoring goals and producing victories. This competitive fire had to be cooled when she couldn't be on the field, which opened her eyes to her true and deep love for the sport and her team.

"I realized that the number one thing is I absolutely love soccer so much and I love playing soccer with these girls so much," Kingman says. "I really just want the best for the team and to have fun playing soccer, so it's not so much about stats or the playing time anymore. It's just about going out there and having a great time with these girls because I have such an appreciation for it and I know how fast it can go by. The whole experience of sitting out made me realize those little things don't matter so much and it's just an incredibly lucky position to be able to play soccer at UNC with these awesome and talented girls. It really had a positive impact on my perspective."

Now, Kingman is playing for her team as a graduate student in the master of accounting program in the Kenan-Flagler Business School. She is able to lead by example on and off the field again. She reflects on this season so far and points out the highlights as traveling back to her hometown with her team to play Santa Clara and Stanford and the 10-hour bus ride from Notre Dame to Syracuse, something she may not have appreciated before.

"Annie was able to take a step back. It is easy to get caught up in the competitiveness of our team and what you're going to do after college. I think she is able to appreciate playing more and have more fun because she remembers why she started playing," Scarpa says about how Annie has grown through this experience.

Kingman is thrilled and grateful to have the opportunity to get back out on the field, especially with her newfound appreciation of the sport, and she has set her sights on continuing her soccer career after UNC. She is currently in the process of getting her Masters from the UNC Business School, and her goal is to continue that process while playing soccer overseas. Her stellar outlook and attitude are sure to take her far with these aspirations.

As a captain of the 2018 team, Kingman has helped lead UNC to a #3 national ranking and the squad's first outright ACC regular-season championship since the 2010 season (UNC shared the title her freshman season in 2014). On Thursday night, she and nine other players in their fourth or fifth years in the program will play their final regular season home game going up against long-time rival Wake Forest at 6 p.m. at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C.

While talking with Kingman in the Student-Athlete academic facility at Loudermilk, another athlete passed by us and looked me in the eye and exclaimed with a smile "Annie is the GOAT."

That says it all.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

GoHeels Exclusive: Soccer is Still the Same Game but Kingman Is a New Athlete

Players Mentioned

Annie Kingman

Jessie Scarpa

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