After sitting out high school season, McLaughlin to play at Illinois State

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GREENFIELD — Being a talented soccer player has led Greenfield’s Kelsi McLaughlin to a lot of great opportunities.

It has also created some difficult choices.

One of the toughest calls came right before her senior season at Greenfield-Central High School.

Along with thriving at the high school level, McLaughlin has been part one of the state’s top traveling soccer organizations, Indy Premier Soccer Club.

Prior to the 2021 high school season, McLaughlin decided to concentrate solely on club teams.

As part of Indy Premier, McLaughlin played on two teams that advanced far into national tournaments. Indy Premier United Girls Academy reached the national semifinals in Oceanside, Calif. A few weeks later in Florida, for Indy Premier Elite 1, McLaughlin’s team finished as the runner-up in another national tourney.

It’s not uncommon in soccer circles for top players to forego playing at the high school level to compete exclusively for their club programs. The travel success may have swayed McLaughlin, but it didn’t make her choice an easy one.

“It was a hard decision for my senior year because I just really wanted to focus on getting better and training really hard and preparing myself for college,” McLaughlin said.

She hadn’t planned on playing for G-CHS as a junior either, but COVID-19 came and canceled a European trip. McLaughlin was going to be the Indy Premier Soccer Club representative in an event in Italy.

“I wasn’t going to play, as a junior, even though it ended up being super fun,” she added.

Looking to her soccer future, McLaughlin said she believes the right decision was made.

“We played with some older kids and scrimmaged colleges,” McLaughlin said of her fall season with Indy Premier. “I felt that it was a better fit for me overall just to continue playing travel and work on my abilities, physically and technically, to get ready for college.”

“We were at such a high point (with the travel team) and a lot of the other girls were staying and playing travel,” she added. “It made sense to continue and keep going where we were at because we were such an amazing team.”

McLaughlin said she was still supportive of the G-CHS squad, and remains good friends with a lot of her former Cougar teammates.

She said the three years were a good experience for her. “At first I didn’t want to play at all (at the high school level), but I am glad I did.”

Earlier, McLaughlin had to make another important decision, where she was going to play collegiately.

Even without the club ball connections and success, McLaughlin had built up an impressive body of work during her high school career.

As a sophomore, in 2019, she was the Daily Reporter Hancock County Player of the Year. She scored 33 goals, one shy of the school record, and had eight assists for a 74-point season. Many of the games were blowout wins. McLaughlin’s numbers could have been a lot bigger had she been left in for the entirety of games.

As a junior, she added 22 goals and eight assists.

She received numerous college offers and narrowed the choices to four schools, picking Illinois State, an NCAA Division I program that plays in the Missouri Valley Conference, over Illinois, Western Michigan, and Indiana Wesleyan.

“I did a lot of research on all the schools (that offered me a scholarship),” McLaughlin said. “A lot of them didn’t fit in with my checklist I created.”

“I picked Illinois State for its Business Administration program, and that was the No. 1 thing,” she said of the item at the top of her checklist. “The campus was the perfect size, about 20,000 students, so it wasn’t too big or too small. It has a great soccer program, and coaching staff. I also really liked the team chemistry with the other players … The location of the school is good. It’s not too far from home so my parents can come watch me and visit.”

McLaughlin is continuing her sooner-rather-than-later approach in preparing for her initial college season.

She has already left home for Normal, Ill., to work out with her new teammates. They are doing conditioning, team building and practicing on their own before the official season begins.

“I am ready to start playing,” she said.