SARATOGA SPRINGS — Kylan Rhude, a Saratoga Springs High School student who is currently a senior on the Girls Varsity Lacrosse Team as a goalie and has been playing the sport for twelve years. Although an injury pulled her out for the season, she has still shown up to every practice and game to support her teammates. She is often seen mentoring the team’s goalie. You can see her sitting on the side lines at the games cheering her team on. “I get so excited for my team when we score or do well that I often times will jump up in excitement forgetting that I have this injury.” She said. It goes to show her dedication and support for her team.
Kylan is also a part of the Saratoga Youth Lacrosse Association and will help the younger players build up their skills. While SYLA often has practices after the Varsity Lacrosse Teams on Monday’s and Wednesday’s, she will try her best to get to their practices to help coach the youth players. With the fact that she has been out this season with an injury, when she goes to these practices, she focuses on what she can teach them, which often will be the fundamentals of the game. She is also looking to find more goalies for SYLA because there is a shortage of players. She knows the basics and can easily teach them to the new players.
As a goalie, Kylan has been helping her back up who has been playing in her place this season. She will often stay after practice with the goalie to help her become a better player. She will often shoot with her, give her drills as well as let her know what she is doing wrong and how she can improve. She does this because she is aware of how much help she has needed with the position and wants to help in any way she can. When Kylan is seeking help with learning more skills for her position, she will often go down to Albany Academy and work with their coach who will work with her or a bout two hours three times a week. With this extra help she can apply that to her teammate with teaching her what she is learning and helping both become all-around better players. Speaking about her teammate, Kylan says “She has actually really improved over this season with the work we have done together.”
Kylan is also part of the National Honor Society which requires her to have an upwards of twenty-two hours of volunteer work, which she uses her coaching of SYLA players to help fill that requirement, on top of doing it for the joy of helping younger players. She is also a volunteer at the National Cemetery in Schuylerville, which part of her duties is helping with the Wreaths Across America during the winter. With that she helps gather people to participate so that way there is enough people to help put wreaths on the tombstones. This is her way of showing support for the military, especially since she has plans on going into the military herself.
Kylan is an amazing person, athlete and is considered to be a leader with everything she has been doing from helping the team and youth players. She is also doing everything she can to make sure the game of Lacrosse is fun and exciting for current and future players, despite her injury. She is truly a remarkable person destined for great things and is a great leader in what it means to be a star athlete.
Kylan will be attending the University of Akron with the intentions of playing D1 Lacrosse as well as being part of the ROTC, in which following her time in school she will spend eight years in the U.S Army.
