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For a brief time, Kyle Venter wondered if he had made the right choice in attending UNM.
Venter, a fifth-year senior defender on the men’s soccer team, had been one of the best players on the Aurora, Colo. Smoky Hill High School team, part of winning two state championships along with various individual accolades in his time at Smoky Hill.
At the start of his freshman year at UNM in 2008, Venter wasn’t among the Lobos’ best players, nor was he seeing any playing time. The coaching staff decided to redshirt the incoming freshman — a decision that was difficult for Venter to handle.
“I did actually think about leaving (in) my first semester because redshirting was so hard,” he said. “You come from being one of the best players on your team to another where you have to wait your turn. It was hard. But the support of my family and my teammates was unbelievable. They’re the reason (I am) where I am now. How hard I worked was for all of them.”
Watching games from the pine was something Venter, who started playing soccer at age 4, had never experienced before.
“It was hard just going to training every day knowing that you’re not going to play,” Venter said. “I think that goes with the maturity. That showed I was immature at that point, but getting through that I became more mature.”
Associate head coach Paul Souders said Venter has matured quite a bit during his time with the Lobos, and that Venter’s redshirt year was a turning point in his career.
“Any time you redshirt it’s a tough mental year, but it ends up becoming a great year,” Souders said. “It was tough for him to integrate into the team that year. Early on in his career the focus was on himself; he had to make sure he was fit, and that he was getting better every day. After he got to a certain point where he was comfortable with his own ability he started to make those around him better.”
Once Venter decided to stay with the program, he set out to improve his game, which meant pushing himself to new heights.
“That was one of the time periods where I worked the hardest in my life,” Venter said. “With the experience the coaching had I was taking everything they said and taking it to heart. If they said ‘work on this,’ I worked on that; I did work pretty hard, and that shows to the success of the team right now.”
Venter’s work has apparently paid off considering his numerous honors, including his being named a preseason All-American by College Soccer News in July. Venter has achieved a great amount of personal success on the pitch, but so have the Lobos as a whole with two Sweet 16 appearances to their credit in the past two years.
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“I just think (being named an All-American) means that I’ve been very privileged to be on a lot of good teams the last couple of years,” he said. “Without all those guys, who says I’m named to any team? It goes to show that this program is doing a lot of things.”
