Despite Injuries, Campbell Refuses to Give Up : Division II soccer: Senior forward leads No. 2-seeded Canyon into semifinal.

If Kim Campbell’s soccer survival tactics were put into words, they could be summed up in the phrase, “Takes a licking and keeps on kicking.”

That is how some of her soccer associates describe the work ethic of Campbell, the 5-foot-4, 104-pound senior forward from Canyon.

“Sometimes I don’t know how she does it,” said Carrie Fair, who has played alongside Campbell at the high school and club level. “She’s not afraid to take anyone on, no matter what their size.”

And no matter what the cost.

In early February, Campbell got more than her share of nicks during a 2-0 victory over Orange. It was the last game she would play before the postseason.

Campbell has had several serious knee injuries in high school, and after the game against Orange, went to the hospital, where doctors found swelling under her left knee cap. She sat out the final five games.

But not until after the victory over Orange. Campbell wouldn’t leave the game.

“She could barely walk, but she wanted to stay in,” Fair recalled.

Her competitive drive isn’t anything Campbell’s particularly proud of. It’s just there.

“I feel I have to fight back,” she said. “I don’t like to give up for a second or give up the ball. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing or what the score is. It’s not something I learned, it just came with me. I have to try 100% all the time. That’s the way I am.”

This resilience has paid off for Campbell, who will attend UC Santa Barbara on a soccer scholarship in the fall, and for Canyon, the second-seeded team in the Division II Southern Section girls’ soccer playoffs. Today at 3, Canyon (24-2-0) meets unseeded Sunny Hills (20-2-2) in a semifinal. A victory would give the Comanches a shot at its first section championship.

Canyon Coach John Williams calls Campbell hard-working and certainly the most intense player.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Santa Barbara is going to like what they’re getting.”

There’s no doubt about what she has done for Canyon’s program. Williams said there is a direct correlation between Campbell’s talents and the Comanches’ success.

“I had heard of her before she was a freshman, and she made an impact here right away,” Williams said. “Her sophomore year was the only time we didn’t win league.”

Campbell scored three goals in the season opener her sophomore year, then sat out the remainder of the 1990-91 season with a tear of the medial collateral in her right knee. Her freshman year, Campbell led the county in scoring with 36 goals then came back her junior year and scored a county-leading 48.

Before missing the final five games, she was leading the county with 30 goals--she scored Canyon’s goal in its 1-0 victory over Long Beach Wilson last week--but has since been overtaken by Sunny Hills’ Jamie Gardiner, who has 34.

“We talked about how important it was to have her score as many goals as possible, and we decided it wasn’t,” Williams said. “I took her out or moved her and used her somewhere else when we were up in the score. It wasn’t that important to leave her in a game we had already won just to get her more stats.”

Besides, she was just as effective in the other roles she took on.

“Her first instinct is to score, but if she can’t, she has the ability to see what adjustments have to be made and she can make them,” Williams said. “She can switch positions easily. She’s one of the best defenders we have. She just does everything. Even if she doesn’t score, she commands the best defender be put on her and that opens it up for us in other areas.”

Although the score sheets indicate Canyon didn’t miss Campbell’s offensive punch in the five games she missed, the players paint a different picture.

“We needed her, even though we did win those games,” Fair said. “We have (goalkeeper) Tina (Thompson), who runs things in the back, but we need someone up front. She controls the offense, gets things going up there. We missed her when she was out.”

Asked to name a specific game in which Campbell was instrumental in a victory, Fair was stumped: “You can’t narrow it down to one game. Her skills are so good.”

Skills which, for the most part, were honed at the club level. Campbell has been playing the game since she was 5, and has played for a club team since she was 12. Three years ago, she was playing for the Placentia club, when the team’s season ended. A coach with the Mission Viejo Herricanes, who were headed for the State Cup, spotted Campbell and invited her to join the Herricanes for the rest of their season.

She has been there ever since. Campbell was a member of the 1991 Herricane team that won the Under-16 national championship. Over the weekend she attended one of a series of tryouts for the Women’s State Program, which Campbell said is the beginning of the process of joining the U.S. national team.

But a spot on the national team is a dream she won’t allow herself to get caught up in.

“If it happens, I’d love to, but it’s a long process,” she said.