It would be shocking if Lindsay Taylor didn’t get better as a soccer player. Even more shocking is just how good that would be.
As the Stanford team powered its way to an 18-1-1 record during its regular season, late August to early November, Taylor topped the Pacific-10 Conference in goals (16) and game-winning goals (7). It wasn’t the result of previous college experience paying off; it wasn’t a reflection of maturing within the Cardinal system. It was a Pac-10 Freshman of the Year performance for the forward who entered Stanford from “down the street”—Castilleja School in Palo Alto.
Next season, Taylor will have an obvious team-oriented objective: help Stanford win the NCAA title it couldn’t quite achieve in December, when the squad fell 1-0 to Notre Dame in the championship semifinal. Four tournament victories had advanced Stanford to the College Cup, the women’s soccer final four, for the first time since 1993.
Asking Taylor about her individual aspirations is inevitably awkward, given her staidly modest demeanor. It’s not that she’s without intensity. It’s just that almost everything in her life circles back to the purest of motivations. “I really love to play soccer,” she says.
There are classes she enjoys, and she likes hanging out with friends, playing ping pong or the Rock Band video game. But she has soccer on the brain, as she did while growing up in Los Altos, and as she expects to even after graduating from Stanford. Can she envision a future without soccer? “Right now,” she says, looking confounded by the possibility, “it’s hard to see that.”
As a player, the 5-foot-7, 125-pound Taylor is defined by two attributes: relentless fervor for the game and a stunning flair for scoring, which is probably the sport’s most magical knack. Although great goal-scorers are celebrated for their innate instincts, Taylor is thoughtful about what happens in the sudden unfolding of an opportunity. “I guess it’s just having a sense of composure and just being calm about it when you strike the ball,” she says. “It’s definitely easy to get caught up in the moment and in the pressure.”
Taylor won’t say she expected to be such a major force in her freshman year, but she will acknowledge having anticipated the elite season for the team, which finished with 15 victories in 2006 and 2007.
“I chose Stanford,” she says, “because I thought it was a place this could happen.”
