Grayson Lynch: from a 4-year-old soccer player to planning to join the draft. 

Lynch has played soccer all of her life. Lynch, a senior human development major has come from playing soccer since she was 4 years old to now becoming a captain of the WSU soccer team.

During Lynch’s freshman year in 2019 was when the women’s soccer team made it to the College Cup. The team was not expected to go anywhere in the tournament, WSU had not been ranked or seeded high and they had to play the top seeds in the semifinals against North Carolina.

They had been on the road for about a month but managed to get through it defeating No. 14 Memphis to open NCAA Tournament, upsetting No. 3 Virginia and beating West Virginia 3-0 before beating South Carolina. For her to be a part of that was something really special to her, she said. 

Lynch started playing soccer because her parents wanted to get her involved in something.

It was something they threw her into but were very supportive of her growing up with it and it made her realize it was something she could do more than at the club level and wanted to continue with it throughout college, she said. 

“[Soccer] allows me to get my mind off of things and to just play something that I have been playing for a while, so I really do not have to think about it and I obviously love the competitiveness of it,” Lynch said. 

WSU intrigued Lynch from the first step she took on campus when she came to visit. She loved the atmosphere of the team and the coaching staff. It felt like the best opportunity for her. Pullman as a whole and the aura of the college town itself intrigued her. 

When WSU reached out to Lynch she did not know much about the university but what really kept her eye on it was the fact that the coaching staff was constantly reaching out to her and wanting her to come to campus. She felt wanted and it was nice that they saw something in her. Her hard work had paid off, Lynch said. 

The team as a whole has a really good relationship on and off the field. They are built-in friends that will keep in touch with each other for years to come. Morgan Weaver, a former teammate and NWSL champion, was someone Lynch looked up to and she still does and communicates with her to this day. 

Lynch will be staying at WSU for another year because of the pandemic, however, after this she plans to join the NWSL draft to take soccer to a professional level, she said.