Girls athlete of the year: South Burlington's Annika Nielsen

A gifted skier with a passion for soccer, Annika Nielsen arrived at South Burlington as a skinny, 5-foot-3 freshman.

She had next to no organized lacrosse experience and couldn’t hear a thing with her left ear. Varsity-ready, she was not.

Four years later, what sort of athlete did she become?

“The type you want a whole team of,” said South Burlington girls lacrosse coach Anjie Soucy. “Super hard worker, ultra-competitive. Her speed is incredible and she’s willing to put the extra time in to make herself better.”

And when Nielsen — now a fleet, powerful 5-foot-11 — finally hit her growth spurt those intangibles turned into amplifiers.

An All-American lacrosse star, a state- and regional-champion alpine skier, a versatile soccer player with a scholarship to play for Division I Marist College, Nielsen emerged as this year’s clear choice for the Burlington Free Press’ girls athlete of the year due to one simple fact.

“Mediocracy is not OK for her,” Soucy said.

“No, it’s not,” Nielsen said. “I’m not going to do something halfway. I’m not going to do something and not do it to the best of my ability, because then it’s just not worth doing. If you’re going to do something, you strive to be the best at it."

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How else can someone blossom into one of the state’s elite in three disciplines that are as divergent as Nielsen’s?

Soccer demands endurance and foot skills. Skiing requires core strength and balance. Lacrosse places a premium on hand-eye coordination and bursts of speed.

Most strive and struggle to excel in just one of those areas.

“She has the obvious, basic athleticism that will translate. But from my perspective what would’ve set her up for success across the board is she’s really good at training,” said Rob Cole, coach of the Rebels girls soccer team the past two years. “She’s really focused and up for every training session. That attitude will let you apply yourself to whatever you do. She came to practice ready to work every day.”

That was the easy part, according to Nielsen.

“You can tell if you love a sport if you love going to practice, and I love going to practice,” she said. “There’s those days you don’t feel it, but you go, you do your thing, you practice, you get all the time you need with your sport, and then you go do it tomorrow.” 

On the pitch that dedication translated into eight goals and 14 assists from defensive midfield over the past two seasons as the Rebels went from a two-win team to a 10-win campaign last fall.

Nielsen was a constant, covering more ground than anyone else on the field, winning balls in the air and transitioning defense to attack in one stroke with her array of passing skills.

“The rare times she’d come out of the game she was on the edge of her seat waiting to go back in," Cole said.

And on the slopes Nielsen, who attended Green Mountain Valley School as a seventh- and eighth-grader, had a strong claim as the top skier at the high school level in Vermont, if not the region.

The senior captured the state championship in the slalom and took second in giant slalom. She won the GS at the Eastern high school championships — in her fourth year as member of Vermont’s regional squad — and came tantalizingly close to a sweep.

Nielsen crashed her first run of the slalom but bounced back for the field’s second-fastest time in her second attempt.

“There’s always the what-if with that. I got a second run … and that was running dead last on a course that was ice,” Nielsen said. “I felt like if I’d have finished that first run I probably could’ve won the slalom too.”

Yet as good as Nielsen was in the fall and winter months, she’s still scratching the surface in lacrosse — and that’s the scary part.

Hours of pinging and catching the ball off a wall by herself transformed a raw, one-handed rookie on the JV team into a dominant central midfielder — the program’s seventh US Lacrosse All-American in the last 20 years.

“Sophomore year I stayed after practice for at least a half an hour every day playing wall ball,” Nielsen said. “It was one of those things I told the younger athletes on the team this year … you just got to hit the wall. It’s all about time. Just like with soccer, it’s all about touches on the ball. You need touches.”

Soucy saw the pieces fall into place with Nielsen’s seven-goal outburst against Burlington. The culmination of years of toil had created a two-way force.

“To be playing the center mid you’ve pretty much got to be the complete package,” Soucy said. “You’re in the game every minute that it’s going on and it’s a lot to do. It takes a lot of skill, endurance.”

Goals piled up so fast this spring that the previously unthinkable 100-goal milestone veered into view, a marker she’d only heard about the program’s best players reaching.

“They were the greats that Anjie always talks about,” Nielsen said. “I didn’t really think it was plausible with me being on the team for three years. I was a ways out.”

A 54-goal, 10-assist season gave Nielsen 116 tallies and 35 helpers with the Rebels’ varsity squad.

Is college lacrosse in Nielsen’s future? Not at the moment — but Soucy doesn’t think it’s out of reach if she wants it.

“She wants to get better, wants the feedback,” Soucy said. “There’s some kids who reach that level and feel like they’re beyond the feedback … but any little thing she can do to improve, she wants to know.”

Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eadanforth

Girls Athletes of the Year

2017: Annika Nielsen, South Burlington

2016: Aggie Bisselle, Burr and Burton

2015: Kathleen Young, Essex

2014: Autumn Eastman, Champlain Valley

2013: Anne-Marie Farmer, South Burlington

2012: Mollie Gribbin, South Burlington

2011: Rachel Crews, South Burlington