College Ultimate's
Season MVP

Lindsay Goldsmith began playing ultimate at Scarsdale High School in New York in 1993. Her first coach was John Gewirtz, formerly of New York New York and Sockeye, and currently playing for Furious George. Gewirtz taught Lindsay to be tough and not to give up, and one of his most common encouragements was to “play through the pain.” Anyone who has seen Lindsay playing with various and multiple broken, twisted, pulled, torn and sprained body parts knows she really took this to heart. At Scarsdale Lindsay was also inspired by captain and mentor Fortunat Mueller. She was a female rookie on a mixed team, and Mueller gave Lindsay confidence in herself by throwing her the disc at every opportunity in a practice or game. More importantly, Mueller taught her that the key to being a good captain is believing and trusting in your players.

Charles Kerr photo

When she reached college, Lindsay joined a young Swarthmore team. The Warmothers had some phenomenally talented players, but the team was still growing into a more competitive frame of mind. With the addition of Lindsay and a couple other very promising freshmen, Swarthmore finally had the depth and drive to win some games. In Lindsay’s freshman spring the Warmothers far surpassed everyone’s expectations, making it to the quarterfinals at Regionals before being eliminated in a one-point loss to ECU.

Lindsay began her sophomore year with her sights set on a goal nobody else on Swarthmore’s team had dreamed of - making it to College Championships. As if to spice up the challenge, in November 1998 Lindsay tore everything in her knee (acl, mcl, lcl and both menisci) at Swarthmore’s alumni game.

Such an injury would make it seemingly impossible to come back in time to lead a new team to Championships, but by the time Lindsay and I became co-captains in the spring of 1999, Lindsay had had her surgery, done the rehab and was back on the field for the very first tournament of the season. It was then that her team realized that really nothing was going to stop her, and damnit, if she could play to go to Championships, then they could play to go to Championships too.
Swarthmore swept the Metro East Region in 1999, beating Princeton by just one point to earn the first spot to the Championships. This was truly the proudest moment of Lindsay’s captaining life. She had led her team - a team that at times thought it couldn’t be done - to win Regionals for the first time in the school’s history. Before the team left for Boulder, Lindsay reminded them that they had already achieved more than anyone thought possible, and they should just go play hard and show people that Swarthmore was a team to watch.

They did just that. In their very first game, a near 3-hour marathon of intensity against Georgia, they lost 13-15. They had achieved their goal - they had gotten everyone’s attention. The most amazing part is that Lindsay didn’t even play in the game. She had come down with a fairly serious virus only days before and was literally incapable of going out on the field. Lindsay’s inspiration, however, had taught them that they are capable of anything if they want it, work for it and, most importantly, love it.

This year in Boston was the third consecutive year the Warmothers made it to College Championships, and Lindsay is confident they’ll keep up the tradition now that she’s graduated - perhaps with the help of her coaching in the spring. In the meantime she’ll be living in Philadelphia and playing her second season with the Philly Peppers. She’s taken a position with the Philadelphia School District as a literacy specialist working one-on-one with middle school students who read below grade level.
— Jenny Hoedeman