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Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Sports

After school, Kristean Kissel, would often find herself sitting in the gym waiting for her sisters basketball practice to get over. As she waited, she slowly started to enjoy the game and soon picked up on it.


"I found basketball through my sister," said Kissel. "I would have to wait after school for her to finish practice, so I slowly picked up the game. She was the one who taught me a lot of stuff about that sport early on."


Kissel's sister and father were her biggest influences. Her father excelled in baseball, but school was never his thing. It was Kissel's sister who influenced her to do well in sports and her education as well.


"In a weird way this taught me a lot," said Kissel. It made me strive to become a better student and do the school work that I loved to put off in high school and still do to this day. My sister would always try to find new things to introduce me to."


Although Kissel enjoyed basketball, she found her calling in soccer. It was something she had discovered on her own and that is what she cherishes about the game.


"I enjoy soccer more because it was something that I found on my own growing up," said Kissel. "I have made it my sport, and I will always enjoy it much more. Basketball would probably be here too, but it's more fun to analyze it, then to play it personally."


Growing up near the Canadian border in Champlain, NY, she had a lot of great coaching experiences early on in soccer that helped pave the path for her career in soccer.


One summer, Kissel had stumbled across a women's soccer league that was run in her area and she joined the team in the neighboring town. What she didn't know was that joining this league would lead to one of her fondest memories.


"My first year on that team we won the championship against a team that had blown us out the previous two times we played them," Kissel said. "The opposing team went up 2-0 early on, but we battled back to have it 2-1 at half time. For the overall game the opposing team out-shot us 19-10 in the game. I wound up with 17 saves, which to this day is the most I have had in a game. This is by far one of my most fondest memories of my sports career."


Kissel played both basketball and soccer in high school, but says she played the game her way then.


"I played soccer much different then I do now," said Kissel. "I did not get along with the coach so I was more there for the people I played with. I was still learning a lot about the game and got frustrated when the coaches could not answers the questions that I had since I was not always a keeper. So I picked up watching games when I could and found that I was learning more this way, than through the coaches I had."

Continued...

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