When Taylor Klone was in the sixth grade, she dreamed of playing soccer and attending college at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Wednesday, she signed a piece of paper that ensured she will live that dream.
Klone, a senior at Durango High School, signed a National Letter of Intent to play women’s soccer at Colorado Mines during a special ceremony Wednesday as part of National Signing Day.
“It’s been my goal since sixth grade to play on the Mines team,” Klone said. “That was my big deciding thing, and I finally did it.”
Klone, a 5-foot-3 outside midfielder, has improved each year since joining varsity as a freshman. Though she only played seven games her freshman season, she burst onto the scene with four goals. Last year, she scored a career-high nine goals to lead the team as a junior. In three years, she had 16 goals and four assists.
Now, she has one semester of school and one varsity girls soccer season left with the Demons before she will join the Orediggers.
Colorado Mines went 17-4-1 overall last year and 10-1-1 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference to continue a run of recent dominance in the conference under head coach Kevin Fickes, who has served eight years as head coach and 18 years on the Mines staff.
The Orediggers reached the third round of the NCAA Division II Tournament last year before they fell to RMAC rival University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.
The DHS Demons also are coming off one of their best seasons in program history, and Klone is excited about transitioning from one winning program to another.
“I’m nervous,” Klone admitted. “I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do, but I hope it will be pretty seamless. We’ll see.”
Klone, who plans to study mechanical engineering, said her favorite part of being a Demon has been all the travel between games. It is an aspect of the game she will continue to enjoy in a college conference that has to do a great deal of traveling.
“I love traveling with my team and spending as much time as I can get with my teammates,” she said. “That’s something I don’t want to forget ever.”
Klone also will get a chance to travel with her new team to Durango at least once a year when the Orediggers meet the Fort Lewis College Skyhawks.
“It will be really nice to have my friends come see me,” she said. “And a lot of my friends are going to colleges in Denver, too, so I hope they can come cheer me on there, too.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
