Saluted by friends and foes after a four-year soccer career at Bayfield, Maddy Duran, the 3A/2A Southwestern League's 2016 Player of the Year, has accepted a chance to walk on for Head Coach Jimmy Hall at soccer-wild Fort Lewis College in Durango.
She will join several February National Letter-of-Intent signers, including 4A Palisade's Nicole Harkreader and 5A Littleton Dakota Ridge's Courtney Wamboldt, as well as one each from New Mexico, Washington, Texas and Maryland.
"For me, like, the location was a big deal - I love it here, I love Durango. And 'Z,' she went to that school and I really look up to her," Duran said, referring to BHS Coach and FLC graduate Jen Zelinski-Moore. "So I'm really excited to play for Z's alma mater; I think that will be really, really fun.
"Fort Lewis has always been, like, a big part of my life," she said. "Having such a good program was super attractive for me as a player. I'm really excited that I get to play there." The Skyhawks went 12-5-4 overall in 2015, finished second in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (by going 8-2-1) and qualified for the NCAA Division II Tournament - where their season unluckily ended via a double-OT scoreless draw with Austin, Texas' St. Edward's University.
"Jimmy recruited me as a 'utility' player, so basically I can play anywhere on the field," Duran said. "At Bayfield, I was playing center-mid, but for my club team, I was actually playing as a center-back.
"So Jimmy was looking at all that. I'm just really open. I'm a soccer player first, not a 'center-mid' or anything, so I'm excited to play wherever he wants me."
Named a first team CHSAA Academic All-State honoree, Duran had other college soocer options, including at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. She liked FLC's tradition as a soccer school, however, and Hall's growing stature in collegiate coaching.
Named Honorable Mention All-3A by CHSAANow.com, ColoradoPreps.com and MaxPreps.com in early June, Duran helped Bayfield compile a 47-15-4 overall (38-6-4 in league) record during her four years.
Each season ended with BHS qualifying for the state tournament, and Duran was able to net a postseason goal in an overtime loss in Colorado Springs to Parker Lutheran as a freshman, in a second-round loss at Broomfield Jefferson Academy as a junior, and in a regulation loss in Colorado Springs to Lafayette Peak to Peak as a senior.
But even in that final defeat, Duran's character showed.
"Maddy came over and high-fived me after the game, and usually I have to grab her and make her," Zelinski-Moore had said with a laugh after the match. "But I think she realized this was her last time to do it."
Duran declared her appreciation to not only Zelinski-Moore and assistant coaches Dave Foster and Josh Kitchen, but to numerous individuals instrumental to her off-field development.
"My mom and I moved to Hawaii my sophomore year ... I fought super hard on that," she said. "I wanted to stay in Bayfield. I loved my coach, I loved my team. I didn't want to go - I love Colorado!"
The daughter of a U.S. Navy captain, Duran moved a lot as a kid. Her father is now stationed at historic Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where evidence of indiscriminate Japanese shootings in 1941 still decorate numerous buildings.
A short stint in Hawaii was enough, however, for their BHS soccer player.
"So my parents sent me back; I ended up living with the Flemings, then with my granddad, then with my brother ... and then I moved back my junior year. Hated it again, didn't want to be there, moved back here. Mind you, I did all this before basketball season every time - so I played basketball, played soccer here all four years! So I lived away from my parents while I was, like, 15, 16 years old; I had to grow up really, really fast.
"I just had to adapt. It was a really eye-opening experience for me because I had, like, different rules in each house and I was being parented by 'that' family but also by my parents at the same time. On Senior Nights, Parent Nights, I never had family here - my Senior Night for basketball, I used Z! But I had really influential people like Jeff Misener, Jen and Derek Smith so supportive of me all the time."
Fort Lewis' 2016 season will start in Texas, with the 'Hawks kicking off against Lubbock Christian University on Sept. 3.
Duran graduated BHS with better than a 3.9 and has indicated an interest in studying exercise science. "If I'm being completely honest, I'll probably miss Z the most," she said of her high school career.
"But I'm really going to miss how much respect the girls had for me. I really loved being the leader. These girls were always really responsive to my 'coaching,' would come to me and ask questions. They would always go hard with me, and I just loved the relationship and the connection that this team had, and the responsibility that this coaching staff put on me.
"As a freshman, nobody knew me," she continued. "Like, in the league I was just this unknown talent. They wouldn't man-mark me; I just got to score whenever I wanted to because nobody was marking me. But through the years, my junior year I started to notice a girl would follow me everywhere on the field. I was like, 'Who are you? Get off me!'
"I remember coming off one time and I was so frustrated; I was like, 'WHY?' And Z was like, 'Take it as a compliment. You need to learn how to beat the girl next to you - it's going to be their best defender, it's going to be their fastest player. Don't let it beat you; get better than it.'"
A service-sounding mantra by which Maddy Duran's ready to live her life, and already has been.
