Going against the grain of many great athletes, Kat Collins '11 did not emerge from the womb wielding a lacrosse stick, nor did she start playing as soon as she took her first steps.
Instead, she was peer-pressured to start playing in seventh grade because all her friends were doing it. Even once she started playing, the path to all-star status was not paved in gold.
As Collins reflected on her middle school days back when she practiced her ball skills by spending solo time with a backboard she grimaced.
"I was so bad I almost got cut," she said, "I made the team, but only because I told them I played goalie."
This season, Collins is leading the Big Green with 23 goals and is tied for second on the team with eight assists. With 31 points overall, she is the team's standout player.
After her not-so-promising middle school days, Collins transitioned to more intense play at Darien High School in Connecticut, where lacrosse was hugely popular. The school's lacrosse program featured experienced, intense coaches and the team frequently made the state championships. The majority of lacrosse players went on to college play.
Despite a lukewarm introduction to the world of lacrosse, Collins went out for the team her freshman year and secured a spot on the varsity squad. She said she is still perplexed as to how it happened.
"The whole year, I thought it was a mistake that I was on the team because I never played," she said.
Collins, who also played soccer for all four years of high school, confessed to having loved soccer more than lacrosse throughout her childhood she dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player.
Then, during her sophomore year, something in her lacrosse game clicked, and she became a leader on the team.
"I came into my own and started feeling more confident playing," Collins said.
From that point on, Collins' lacrosse career continued to rocket forward. By her senior year, she led her team to victory in both the county and state tournaments, and earned recognition as MVP of the final game of the county tournament.
Collins, who said she never thought she would be recruited, was shocked when college scouts came calling by the bunch the summer before her senior year.
After narrowing her list to Dartmouth, Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University, Collins had a tough decision to make. A summer full of visiting campuses and talking to coaches, however, convinced her that Dartmouth was the right fit.
"I came on two visits here, and each time I was really drawn to the people, both on the team and at the school," she said.
Collins excelled and improved as a Big Green team member until her junior year, when she partially tore her ACL five games into the season during an intense match-up against Syracuse University.
Yet the very game at which Collins hurt her knee is also the game she pinpoints the team's big turning point. Dartmouth crushed the opposition, and Collins considered the win a good omen for things to come.
"My freshman and sophomore years were kind of frustrating because we weren't getting the results that we wanted, but beating Syracuse solidified all the time we had put in," she said. "Things started rolling from there."
During the Ivy League tournament at the end of her junior season, a healed Collins exploded on the field after participating in just two practices. She proceeded to earn herself a spot on the All-Tournament team.
"I was really proud of how I came off of my injury," she said. "I was hoping for a longer postseason, but unfortunately we didn't get into the NCAAs."
This year, the team not only hopes to make the NCAA tournament, but to win it.
Collins also laid out some personal goals for her senior year.
"I came into the season wanting to improve my shooting percentage, and I've been working a lot on being more vocal and directive on the attack," she said. "It's kind of out of my comfort zone, but that's one of my biggest challenges."
It is unclear how Collins will channel her lacrosse talent after graduation. She has considered playing for the national team she even tried out after her freshman year and made it to the final round of cuts but as of right now, she doesn't want to try out again.
She said, however, that she cannot picture a future without lacrosse.
"It hasn't hit me yet, and it won't hit me until the day it happens, but it's going to be so weird," she said. "It's been eight years of something being so important to me, and then it's just gone."
The Big Green is set to play at the University of Pennsylvania this Saturday at 1 p.m. Both teams are undefeated in Ivy League play coming into the game.
