By Marc Mullen

Tweet

One does not need to go much beyond than the bio part on her Twitter profile to understand Kelsey Loupee. It’s all there, typed out in 27 characters and four spaces.

“AO1 Colossians 3:23 VTWS #9”

Taking that snippet in reverse, the Littleton, Colorado, native is a senior midfielder on the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team who wears the jersey No. 9. She rededicated herself to her faith midway through her college career in Blacksburg, hence the Biblical verse from Colossians. Finally, she enjoyed a tremendous experience in Brazil this summer because of her connections with Athletes in Action, a national group of athletes who use sports as a platform for sharing their faith.

“AO1 – that means ‘Audience of One,’” she said. “So instead of playing to glorify yourself, it’s playing to glorify God, which is something that I definitely have learned a lot about through my college career here by being part of Athletes in Action.

“It’s been real special for me to transform my way of playing from playing all about me and trying to be the best player to trying to make my team really good. That’s obviously important to me, but it’s also important that I am a player of good character that makes people question: Why do I play that way? Why am I such a team player? Why am I always so positive? And those answers give me an opportunity to share my faith, which is really important to me.”

It’s been a neat transformation for a young woman who used to be a self-described “chubby girl with a mullet,” someone who was not very graceful for being an athlete. She’s broken her collarbone twice, but not in a competitive environment, and her workouts on plyometric boxes have left two big scars on her left shin.

As a kid, she tried all types of activities, but never really got into a comfort level in any of them.

“I actually tried a lot of sports, even after I started playing soccer, which was one of my first,” she said. “I tried T-ball, and I was the only girl on an all-boys team. But because I’m left-handed, I would hit the ball and run to third base, so I didn’t last long in that sport.

“I did ballet for about a day, but I was bigger than my instructor – she was this little petite Asian, beautiful dancer – and I really didn’t fit in to dancing. I did gymnastics as well, and I didn’t fit into that either.

“Then, my dad actually coached my brothers in wrestling, and they were all pretty good. To get all four of us out of the house, he would take me to practice, too, and that lasted until I started learning the moves and using them on my brothers. My mom didn’t want me to be a wrestler, so I couldn’t go anymore. After that, I just played soccer, and that one stuck.”

All four of the Loupee children – including older brothers Christopher (27), Kyle (25) and Cory (23) – played soccer growing up. The two oldest played at Colorado School of Mines, either on the varsity or club team while continuing their educations, and Cory played club soccer at the University of Wyoming.

Loupee also knew from a young age that she wanted to play soccer in college, so she took to the sport as much as she could. Interestingly, the family never had cable television, and the kids were not allowed to play video games. So rather than sneak over to a friend’s house to do either – as her brothers sometimes did – she said she would just go outside and practice.

“I was pretty blessed to have the opportunity to play with a really good club team [the Colorado Rush],” she said. “We played at a really high level, and we made the state tournament every year. We made it to the finals, we made it to regionals, and we made it to nationals my last year of club soccer.

“My club experience was really good, and through that, I knew I wanted to play college soccer from even before I started playing competitively, which is like U-11 [under 11 years old]. It’s never been a question in my mind that that’s what I wanted to do.”

She wanted to play at the next level, but she didn’t just want to go to some small school in her home state of Colorado. She wanted to play on the biggest stage that she could. So during the recruiting process, she sent out letters to every school that made the NCAA Division I national tournament the previous couple of years.

One of those schools was Virginia Tech, which made it to the third round of the NCAAs in 2010 and got beat in the first round in 2011. The Hokies expressed an interest in her, but they just weren’t at the top of her list.

Yet maybe there was a little divine intervention that followed.

“Being a naïve, young high schooler, I was like ‘Virginia Polytechnic Institute … I don’t even know what that means. That doesn’t sound like anything I want to do,’” she said. “But my mom pushed me into looking more into it because she knew that it wasn’t just a technological and engineering school. There was more to it.

“And actually Chugger [Adair, Tech head women’s soccer coach] played in college with my club coach [Andrew Kummer] from back home, and they were good friends. So there was that really good connection there. I don’t remember what it was, but I finally decided I was going to go visit the school. There wasn’t a thought in my mind, though, that I wanted to go to Virginia Tech.

“It was more like, here’s this school that I’m going to go visit, so I might as well get used to the process, and this is a school that I can do that at. Then I got here, and by the end of my trip, I can’t really pick out a specific thing, but I just had this feeling that this is where I was supposed to be. A week later, I committed, and it’s been the best decision I’ve made.”

Her first three years at Tech have been a rollercoaster ride, with its shares of ups and downs. As a freshman, Loupee started 19 games and played in all 23 of the Hokies’ matches. She helped the team advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history.

She scored two goals and dished out seven assists as a freshman, but suffered through a sophomore slump. She made just six starts and played in 19 games, but that experience brought her to the place where she is today.

“I came in [her freshman year] pretty confident because my club team had just made it to the national championship, literally, like two days before I had to report,” she said. “It was funny. I actually played in the game. We went into overtime in the national championship game and lost, so that was disappointing. But I flew home from Arizona to Colorado, and my car was already packed to drive out here. So I got in a car with my parents three hours after we got home, and we drove all the way across the country to get to Blacksburg. Not sure if that was the best idea, but we got here and moved in and then the following morning, we ran a fitness test, so that was pretty crazy.

“Then the next year, I didn’t eat enough, and I was working out so hard that I really tore my body down a lot. So where I thought I was training to help myself to get better, I took it too far, and that was a setback year for me.

“But in the long run, it was the best thing for me because I was able to question why I was playing soccer and if it was important enough for me to live a certain way. I think it really refocused me, as tough as it was not being able to play as much. I think, in the end, it definitely made me a better person, a better player and a better teammate.”

During her junior year, the Hokies enjoyed the most successful season in program history by reaching the College Cup. Loupee again scored a pair of goals and racked up 10 assists, the third-most in a single season at Tech. That pushed her career total at the end of the 2013 season to 19, which was tied for the third-most in a career.

Much of her confidence and success, though, can be traced back to her decision during her rough sophomore year to join then-teammate Emily Siegel at an Athletes in Action meeting on campus. It really made a difference.

“When things weren’t going so well, I realized I couldn’t rely on myself for everything,” she said. “So Emily, who is a graduated senior from last year, invited me to a meeting and then I just started going regularly.

“Then I got involved in a Bible study, and through that, this past summer, I got the opportunity to go to Brazil through a soccer ministry. We were able to go over there and play soccer and share the gospel and work with all these kids in an environment that is totally different than here. And we were able to help people who are less fortunate than us.”

Loupee was the only person from Virginia Tech who went on the trip. She started off by heading to Canada for a week to train and work on how to share the gospel. Then the group went to Brazil for more than two weeks to play games, run camps and visit elementary schools. They even had an opportunity to take in a World Cup game.

“Athletes in Action Soccer is based out of a town near Vancouver, so I started up in Canada,” she said. “There was a women’s team and a men’s team, so we obviously played separately, but at camps, we would run different stations, where someone might share their testimony, and in other parts, you just played with the kids and that was all of us mixed together.

“We were actually in a city called Ipatinga, and we were there for most of the time, when we worked with the schools and the church out there. Then at the end of the week, we went to the city of Belo Horizonte, and that’s where we got to see the Belgium versus Algeria game. They both actually made it out of group play, and that was pretty cool.

“The whole experience, being in Brazil, a country that just loves soccer, and being able to say, ‘OK, I’ve been there,’ was so awesome. Soccer has been my whole world, just like it’s been for a lot of these people, and just to be able to share the gospel with them and help them realize that soccer isn’t everything – it’s a very special gift, but it’s from God – was amazing. Athletes in Action has definitely changed my life and has brought me a lot of amazing opportunities like that.”

Loupee’s future plan – after her playing career is over – is more than likely to head back to Colorado and hopefully enroll in Colorado State University’s Peace Corps-Master’s International Program, a program that integrates a master’s in food science and human nutrition [a branch of her undergrad degree in human nutrition, food and exercise] with Peace Corps field experience. Once finished, she’ll explore new opportunities.

Sounds like a perfect plan for someone whose Twitter bio references the Bible passage, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

For updates on Virginia Tech women's soccer, follow the Hokies on Twitter Follow @VT_WSoccer