GW women’s soccer player Kristin Robertson is enrolled for her fifth year at the University but still is waiting to play her fourth year of collegiate soccer.
Robertson was sidelined last season with a broken leg and will have to sit out again this season after breaking the same leg. She has played only three full seasons for the Colonial women, but when she was in good health, Robertson was a tremendous asset on the field.
“Not having Kristin is a huge loss and we are seeing that,” GW head coach Michele Rodriguez-Smith said. “She played center-midfield, which is the quarterback position for a soccer team.
“When she did play, she worked on distributing the ball, not just on scoring goals. She also provided an outside shot, which we are missing now,” Rodriguez-Smith said.
When Robertson first arrived at GW from Burlington, Ontario, she became a vital part of the GW program. Robertson started in all 20 games her freshman year. As a midfielder, she accumulated 14 points that season with five goals and four assists. She scored the game-winning goal for GW three times in 1994.
Although her offensive production went down in her sophomore and junior years, Robertson continued to be an integral part of the GW program. She started every game in the 1995 and 1996 seasons and played in GW’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game.
But after starting every game in her first three seasons, Robertson broke her right leg in an exhibition game in August 1997 chasing after a ball. The injury caused her to miss all of last season, sitting out with a medical redshirt.
Her problems didn’t end. In March 1998, Robertson developed a stress fracture in her right leg. Three months after the stress fracture, Robertson tore a ligament in her ankle.
This summer, Robertson recovered from that series of injuries and was expecting to play for GW and finish her four years of athletic eligibility. But in August, Robertson broke her right leg again during a club team game at home in Ontario.
The newest injury will keep Robertson sidelined for four months, which has forced her to take another medical redshirt. This time, doctors have placed a plate in her leg, which she said is not as painful as the splint she wore the first time she broke her leg.
“I never really came back from the first time,” Robertson said. Although her injuries prevent her from being on the field with the team, Robertson is still involved with the program.
“Instead of Kristin just sitting on the sidelines, we have made her a student coach,” Rodriguez-Smith said. “She helps run practices and drills as best she can while on crutches. She is a tremendous help because she has the skills and the knowledge of the game.”
As far as the future goes, however, Robertson said she is not sure what will happen. She is contemplating returning for a sixth year, depending on the status of her injury. Right now, she is majoring in criminal justice and is thinking about going to graduate school to study psychology.
More than anything, though, Robertson said she wishes she could play soccer again.
“I miss playing with people like (GW senior) Jane Lea, whom I played with at home,” Robertson said.
