You could say that Kaneland senior Holly Collingbourne’s true loves are puppies and the home soccer field in Maple Park.
Collingbourne volunteers at Tails Humane Society in DeKalb, where one of her responsibilities is to simply play with puppies. It’s something she absolutely adores.
“I have two dogs at home and I love animals,” she said. “I like to help out at the community and while I spend most of my time with soccer I’ve also been helping out at Tails for about a year. I’ll clean the cages, feed the puppies and take them for walks, and sometimes I’ll just play with them.”
As for soccer, she doesn’t only love the competition, but the home venue as well, and there’s nowhere she’d rather play than on Kaneland’s field.
“I actually hate playing away games and that we always get passed over to host regionals,” she said. “Our field is so beautiful. It’s perfectly flat and I love playing here.”
Collingbourne has played well for the Knights, who are still trying to figure out some things. The Knights returned 16 players from last year’s 17-5-2 squad, but have been up-and-down with a 7-5 record.
“It’s been one of those seasons where we’ve been battling a lot of injuries, Holly included,” Kaneland coach Scott Parillo said. “She just took a ball to the face against DeKalb and we were fearing a concussion and thank God it wasn’t that because we count on her for so much. We’re just having one of those seasons where we’re putting the pieces together still and don’t have a set lineup yet. But with injuries you can’t put the kids in bubble wrap either.”
The Knights are obviously a better team when Collingbourne is on the field.
“She’s doing what we expected from her, because her passing and touch are great and her leadership has been fantastic,” Parillo said. “You can ask any team we’ve played and when she’s not on the field we’re a different team. She sets up so many things for her teammates.”
Collingbourne, a scoring threat ever since she entered the program, has been asked to attack even more this season. She hasn’t backed down from that task, although results have been mixed.
“I was an attacking mid last year and am now more of a forward since we lost of a lot of attacking players,” she said. “I definitely am willing to do whatever I’m asked to do to help the team as much as possible. Whatever Parillo tells me to do, I’ll do it and hopefully we can win more games.”
The Knights have some big Northern Illinois Big 12 East games coming up, including Sycamore back-to-back on Friday and May 2 and a rematch against Yorkville on May 4.
“We’re doing OK so far, but we know we can do better,” Collingbourne said. “Now that we’ve played a good amount of games I think we’re starting to figure things out.”
One thing she doesn’t have to worry about is her college decision. She’s headed to Marian University in Indianapolis.
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“I’m very excited to play there. It’s a great location in Indy and I’ll have some great opportunities, including playing against a Puerto Rico team,” she said. “It’s nice to not have to worry about next year since I’m all set, and I’m excited for it, but for now I’m focusing on what we can do here.”
C.R. Walker is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News.