If you knew Laurin Uptegrove before high school, you probably knew her as a basketball player. Growing up in Springboro, OH, Uptegrove said her middle school didn’t have a soccer team, so she played for club teams instead.
“When I got to high school, nobody really knew that I could play soccer. Everyone kind of coined me as a basketball player,” she said.
Uptegrove said that making the varsity soccer team her freshman year helped her decide she wanted to focus on soccer.
Soccer isn’t all she’s talented at though. Uptegrove said she took an Advanced Placement art class both her junior and senior years of high school.
“I really wanted to be an architect but obviously Winthrop does not have architecture, so I was kind of thinking that might be more of a grad school route,” she said. “But anyway I can do art still, I will do it.”
Uptegrove recently displayed her art skills by drawing a collage of Winthrop and Rock Hill related sites for the 2020 women’s soccer graduates. Her teammates were so impressed by her work that they encouraged her to sell prints and stickers of the drawing. She said she advertised her work on Facebook and received so many requests to buy her art that she had to create an Etsy account to keep track of the orders.
How did Uptegrove find Winthrop in the first place? Ohio is a long way away from Rock Hill, but since Uptegrove has family from Charleston, she said she wanted to come down south for college. Despite touring the campus on Christmas Eve when no one was around, she said Winthrop immediately seemed like the right fit for her.
Now entering her junior year, Uptegrove is looking for ways to contribute more to her team. While she can’t serve as a captain until her senior year, she still wants to help lead.
“I don’t want to overstep my boundary, but I love to lead by example and still be vocal,” she said. “I love to encourage other people and make the freshmen and everyone feel comfortable.”
Uptegrove became a captain as a junior for her high school team – a team that won its conference championship each of the four years she played. Now, Uptegrove is ready for Winthrop to win a conference championship of its own.
“I really think that we have the potential to be really, really good next [spring] and I think if we have some kind of Big South Tournament then we should be a one or two seed out of the regular season.”
Uptegrove said the Big South plans to begin a conference-only season on February 7. While she said this will make for a busy year (having two seasons in 2021), not playing this fall may be good for her.
“I had ankle surgery in February,” Uptegrove said. “I tore a ligament last season that I kind of just kept playing through. I don’t personally think I would have been all that ready for this season.”
With extra time to make a full recovery, Uptegrove wants to make her last two seasons as great as possible.
“My soccer career is going to be done in one year, but it’s one year full of work,” she said.
Photo by Marisa Fields-Williams
