It’s been a trying journey for Andre as member of Nicholls soccer team

Lauren Andre leads the Nicholls soccer team with four goals.

That’s a far cry from topping 100 career goals while a high school player at Vandebilt Catholic – and that achievement came despite not playing her senior year.

“All four years, I was just playing with players I had been playing with my whole life,” Andre said, recalling her high school years. “We had a chemistry and it was fun.

“I was playing forward for my high school team. One of the main things was just let’s get the ball forward and take shots as much as possible. When they found me and I was open, I would take a shot, and lucky enough to have them go in.”

Andre made the Vandebilt soccer team as an eighth grader. During her time at the Houma school, her teams won a state title, reached the finals twice, and the semifinals twice. The first four playoff appearances came in the Division. In 2020, the Lady Terriers competed in Division II.

Heading into her final season, Andre seemed poised for another big year. That was until she broke her knee in a club game only months before the start of her senior year.

“I was playing in a club game, and I had a breakaway,” she recalled. “I was going one versus one with the goalie and I took just a little too big of a touch and me and the goalie collided and fractured my tibial plateau.”

The tibial plateau is the flat top portion of the tibia bone which runs from the knee to the ankle.

“I didn’t know right away,” remembered Andre, referring to the severity of the injury. “I kind of thought something is not right but thought maybe it’s just a bruise. I tried to put weight on it. I couldn’t put any weight on it. They kind of helped me off the field. I sat down. I saw a little bit of a gash on my leg and thought, ‘OK, it’s probably just bruise, and a little gash and I should be fine.’

“I sat the rest of the game and couldn’t put any weight on it. I went to the doctor, got an x-ray, MRI, and a CAT scan. Finally they told me, ‘Yep, you fractured your tibial plateau,’ and had surgery right away.”

Then came a rehabilitation period of approximately four months.

“I was non-weight bearing for about two of those months. The first two months were pretty painful, but once I could start putting weight on it, it was less painful and I was just excited to finally be able to start moving again, and be hopeful that I could get into some of the games,” Andre said.

Following the long rehab period, Andre was able to play in Vandy’s 3-0 Division II semifinal loss to St. Thomas More in 2020.

“My coach had told me before that he was planning on putting me in,” Andre recalled. “I talked to my physical therapist and my doctors before, and they said, ‘you can play, but try not to go more than five or ten minutes at a time to see how it feels.’

“He put me in like the middle of the first half. It was feeling pretty good. There was a lot of emotions. I was excited to be there, wanted to win. It was a close game. As a senior, I wanted to win with my team.”

While she was physically cleared to play, mentally she had the natural appreciation of an athlete taking the field for the first time in competition following an injury.

“I remember taking a pretty hard hit in the first half. A player on the other team just collided right into me and took my legs out from under me. I remember everybody on the bench was on the edge of their seat,” Andre said. “They stood up and thought something was wrong. I just popped back up and kept going. That took me out of my head, knowing that, ‘OK, I got a hard hit, and my knee is completely fine. That means I can keep going.’

Andre was able to keep going, becoming a member of the Nicholls soccer team a year later.

Prior to the injury, Andre had several college offers. Most dried up with the injury.

“It was a bit of a process. My junior and sophomore year of high school, I was getting some offers, especially from Nicholls and UL (Lafayette) and some other schools,” she said. “Once that kind of happened, it kind of went silent, but I knew Nicholls they still had the offer on the table for me.”

Looking back, playing for Nicholls, Andre said, was something that was just meant to be.

“I think the plan was always to come here, even with all the offers before,” said Andre. “It has a sense of home to me. Getting to watch the games growing up and always coming over here, I just felt at home being in this area. It’s a school I always wanted to play for. I came to many, many of the games. I just fell in love with the school and the program.”

It has been quite a transition for Andre as a member of the Lady Colonels soccer team.

After all her winning in high school, Andre has been part of Nicholls teams that went 0-18 her freshman year and 2-16-1 her sophomore season. Through the first 15 matches of her junior year, Nicholls is 1-14.

“It’s definitely a different side,” Andre said. “There’s a lot more emotions with it. When you are winning all the time, the one emotion is you are happy. Coming here, you get to see a lot of different emotions, and you feel something different each week.

“The one thing I can say about this program this year is each week, we are progressing. That’s something we can get excited about. Yes, we are not winning games, but each week is getting better, and we just have to look at the bright side and see it that way.”

All four of Andre’s goals this season have came in a two-game span.

After the team failed to score in its first four matches of the season, Andre scored the squad’s first goal in a 4-1 loss to Jackson State. She scored two goals the next game in a 4-1 victory over Texas Southern in the only win of the season so far for Nicholls.

“That was one of the weekends where we played our best soccer. I think it’s not necessarily that I had these many shots, and these went in. We were connecting passes and moving the ball as a team. When the time came, we found the back of the net. That just goes to team credit,” Andre said.

Andre’s importance to the team can’t be overstated, according to Nicholls coach Robert Podeyn.

“Lauren is a great kid,” Podeyn said. “She’s a hard worker. She always has a smile on her face. If you ask her to do something, she’ll do it.”

She has done it playing just about every position on the field.

“I’ve played that kid in probably every position except goalkeeper,” said Podeyn. “We will laugh about it sometimes. There are times where I’ve had to play her as a center forward, an attack mid, as a holding mid, as a wing back, and she’s one of those kids that you matter where you put her, you get every ounce of what she’s got in her.

“She’s a perfect team player that way. A lot of fun. She wants to be better, wants to improve, wants the team to do well, and willing to sacrifice and do whatever needs to be done in order to make that happen.”

As a junior, Andre is a veteran on a very young soccer team trying to find its way.

She has one more year before her Lady Colonel career comes to an end. Whether that might be a turn-the-program around season or not, Andre said she takes pride in being part of what she believes is indeed, a program moving in the right direction.

Andre added that she would like to be remembered as a team leader.

“I think that’s a big thing, especially with these young players coming in and not necessarily know where to go. Being that voice on the field to kind of help them out and guide them on the field, and not be the team that loses focus or gets upset when they go down by a goal or something, to pick it back up, move on from it, and do better.”