“So, who’s a brand-new Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame inductee? That’d be me, one Lindsey Roberts.” (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Predicting athletic success for young children is a complicated task.
For every guy with a beard in middle school who never quite becomes a full-fledged star in high school, there’s an undersized little league bench warmer who soars to new heights down the road.
Which is why people with far more restraint and knowledge often remind me not to get too gaga over a 6th grader who can dribble with both hands and start calling them “The Chosen One.”
A lot can change between elementary school and high school, some positive, some negative, and it all impacts young athletes as they flow from 11 or 12 to 18.
Injuries happen. Families move. Young athletes lose their love for a game for any of a thousand different reasons.
Romantic entanglements, drug or alcohol use, academic struggles, it can all pile up.
But then, on the flip side, there are those who blossom, who grow taller, stronger, quicker, or just prove that heart can outweigh physical advantages.
Those who receive crucial support, from family, from coaches, from friends, that piles up too, but in a positive way.
So, when I see an athlete in elementary school, I need to remember all of this. And some days I do.
But there are times when you just know.
Times when you watch a young girl or boy playing in a game and know, 10,000% percent, that, barring a catastrophic change in fortunes, you are seeing someone who is a star now, and someone who will be a star in the future.
Lindsey Roberts was, and is, one of those rarities.
The daughter of two Coupeville High School Athlete of the Year winners, and a niece, granddaughter, sister and cousin to other very-talented athletes, she had a lot going for her from the very start.
But it was obvious, even when she was boppin’ through elementary school, that she wanted success more than most, that she was willing to work for it, and that she would handle it with grace when it arrived.
The past six years, through middle and high school, she has been arguably one of the two or three best athletes wearing a Coupeville uniform.
Makana Stone exists on a different plateau from every Wolf athlete I have ever written about, but Lindsey is firmly in that group right behind her.
You can place Lou with Hunter Smith and Valen Trujillo, with Madeline Strasburg and Josh Bayne, with Wiley Hesselgrave and Maya Toomey-Stout, and know, without a doubt, she belongs in the pantheon.
In middle school, Roberts was a standout volleyball and basketball player, and a fireball who utterly destroyed fools in track and field.
Once she hit the hallways of CHS, she achieved what few do.
There was never a second of her high school career when she was anything less than a varsity star.
Not just a four-year varsity athlete, which, in itself, is something few Wolves have achieved, but a genuine supernova.
Yes, she lettered the maximum 12 times, four each in soccer, basketball, and track, but as she did so, she was more, much more – a starter, a team leader, a go-to warrior, all from day one.
The bench was no place for Roberts, and, if she sat there for more than a few seconds at a time, it was a genuine surprise.
We can list all her accolades.
She’s the #3 scorer in CHS girls soccer history, despite playing much of her career on the defensive side of the ball.
She’s the #18 scorer among Wolf girls basketball players, and that’s a program with decades more history than soccer.
Plus, Roberts sacrificed points to others who were more of a shoot-first type of player, content to snatch rebounds, get out on the break, and do the dirty work, then get her points within the system.
And then there’s track and field, where she’s simply #1.
No other female athlete in the 119-year history of her school, not even Makana, can match the eight competitive medals Roberts won across four state track meets.
She went back to Cheney every year, she brought medals home every time, and she never looked happier than when seen in photos from the often-broiling cauldron at Eastern Washington University.
But, stats only tell part of the story.
Roberts, possibly as much as any CHS athlete I have covered, lived and breathed team, team, team.
Pick a sport, give her a task, and she would excel, making her extremely valuable.
Look, I’m not in the locker room, or on the bus, and I try to stay out of the athlete’s personal lives, to give them at least a moment or two to themselves.
But I have eyes, and I have ears, and, by the end, you have a pretty good idea of what kind a person you’re writing about.
So, I feel very confident when I hail Lindsey, not just as an athlete, but as a person.
She never shied away from the big moment. Never backed down from any foe, regardless of the name on the front of the uniform. Never gave anything less than her best.
A lot of athletes come and go. Some make impacts, others are just here.
A few, a very few, truly impress us.
Lindsey Roberts has impressed me, always, and I have no doubt she will continue to do so.
She was a slam dunk to be inducted into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame years ago, and the only reason it hasn’t happened until today is she had to, you know, actually graduate first.
Now, diploma in hand, Roberts sets out to achieve greatness in other parts of her life.
But, she can always look back home, to her photo, which will soon hang in the CHS gym hallway among other Athlete of the Year winners, and, to the top of this blog, where she’ll live under the Legends tab.
She was one of the greats as a little girl, she is one of the greats now as a young woman, and she’ll always be one of the greats.
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