
WILLIAMSBURG — Sydney King remembers dribbling a soccer ball up and down the sidelines of her older sister’s soccer games.
“I was so upset that 2-year-olds couldn’t play soccer, so my parents bought me this little tiny ball and I would run up and down the sidelines with it,” King says.
Once old enough, King’s parents put her in a soccer league of her own. From clinics and camps to playing recreational soccer, King knew she had found her passion.
“In late elementary school, when my soccer team made it to the state cup, it was the farthest that our team had ever gone. It was that moment of realization where I knew my team was good, I was good, this is a lot of fun winning games and going this far and being so competitive. That was when it really clicked that I was good enough to keep playing and make it something that I wanted to do all the time,” King said.
Entering her freshman year at Lafayette High School, King set the bar high for her goals on the soccer field. As a freshman, King started and played in every game that season. Her first high school goal was part of a hat trick.
“That season was so important to me, because we made it to the regional semi-finals and we went into penalty kicks. My coach chose me to take one of the five penalty kicks and I ended up making mine. It was so important that I got to be one of the five that could step up for my team at such a young age,” King said.

King served as captain during her sophomore, junior, and senior seasons. During her junior year, King was a key member of the team that helped bring home the regional title to Lafayette. That season, King also had the opportunity to play with her younger sister as a member of the squad. In her final year on the pitch for Lafayette, King helped bring the regional and state titles to the Lafayette trophy case.
As she began the college recruitment process, King ultimately found a home at Lenoir-Rhyne University.
“Playing collegiately is something that is just amazing. It’s this place where so many people start to look up to you. It’s something where the whole city that you play in just loves everything about the college. They come to all the games and there is so much support. Being able to travel all over the East Coast for games and going to Florida for the NCAA tournament, it was just incredible. It’s something that you just have such strong emotions attached to it and you fall so much more in love with the sport. My last game, I never thought I’d be crying on a soccer field and during that last game, it really hits you that something you’ve done for your entire life is over,” King recalls.
While at Lenoir-Rhyne, King faced a series of injuries that ultimately led to her having to medically retire from the sport. During her sophomore year, King suffered an early-season concussion. Due to the concussion, King ended up having to take a medical leave of absence.
“I couldn’t go to my classes, I couldn’t attend any practices, I wasn’t spending time with my friends. I had a feeling that retirement may be coming,” King said. “It was so hard to come to the decision and accept that it was happening but looking at it now, just because it was something I did for my entire life, doesn’t mean it’s over. Just because I can’t play anymore doesn’t mean that I can’t still be involved.”
With her passion for soccer still very much alive, King knew she had a multitude of knowledge about the sport. Not wanting to waste it, she started to explore the world of coaching.

“I have so much soccer knowledge and I know the game so well from playing 18 years. To just let that go away, it truly felt like a waste of my own talent. I wanted to pour all that knowledge into younger girls,” King said.
On the sidelines of the pitch as a coach for Virginia Reign Soccer Club, King is spreading that wealth of knowledge to young girls around Williamsburg.
“The girls I coach are usually in their first or second year playing soccer. They are very new to the sport and I think as a coach, I want them to have fun and develop a love for soccer. Those early years of soccer are so formative for how you are going to look at it later on. If you can build it up and the girls look forward to going to it, then they have so much more fun with it and they will stick with it,” King said.
Ultimately, King hopes to find herself as the head of a women’s soccer program at the high school or collegiate level.
“I really want to just keep continuing to progress in my coaching career. I think it would be amazing to coach high school full-time or coaching club soccer full-time. Coaching collegiately would be amazing, that’s the long-term goal,” King said.
While her time on the pitch as a player may have come to a close sooner than she expected, King still loves the sport just as much as she did when she was 2 years old.
“You want to be competitive and you want to win all the games, but you have to love it. Finding the love for soccer led me to loving my team, loving my coaches, and amazing friends. I loved every aspect about it and I hope that as a coach, I can instill that in my own players.”