Meet Kyla Tucker: UI’s promising midfielder

University of Idaho senior midfielder Kyla Tucker hadn’t even graduated high school yet. She hadn’t even turned 16.  

Tucker decided she couldn’t stay in small-town Durango, Colorado, if she wanted to continue to play soccer. She packed her bags and moved to Texas by herself as a freshman in high school. 

“As a freshman without my parents, I moved to Allen (Texas) and lived with a host family, which was just a girl on my team. I did that for two years and played soccer there, and then my senior year, I moved back to Colorado. That was during covid. That was a whole mess.” 

Tucker graduated from Centaurus High School early and went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to attend Temple University. 

“So, I got stuck in a hard situation because of Covid, and the recruiting process was difficult during that time,” she said. “Everything just stopped, so there wasn’t much opportunity for me, but that was one of my offers. I went for it, but North Philly was not my type of environment.  

Tucker spent one and a half years at Temple, appearing in 13 games and having three shots on goal during her short career. She decided she wanted to head somewhere else and ended up at UI.  

“I found Idaho because they had landscape architecture and also because they’re more on the West Coast, which is what I wanted to do, move back to the West Coast. So, I think that led to architecture, and then obviously soccer was here. I think those three things pushed me here,” Tucker said. 

Tucker was bold about soccer from a young age and even went out of the country to play the sport she loved.  

“When I was in sixth grade, I tried out to play with West Ham over in England. I made it to England. I was super young. I got to go there and train and play with all the West Ham girls and got a whole England experience, which was super cool,” Tucker said. 

Tucker has appeared in 29 games since coming to Idaho and has yet to register a goal in her two seasons. With Tucker mainly a substitute, she has gotten less playing time than she hoped, but she feels her fortunes might be changing.  

“Coming over, I wanted to start, obviously, like everyone else does. But it wasn’t really my time, and I struggled coming in,” she said.   

“I struggled with new environments a lot. So, I had to accept that and just work on what I needed to work on to become a good part of the team. It’s been a challenge, but I think my time is coming.” 

Tucker, heading into her senior year, isn’t ready for soccer to be over but is excited about what the future will hold for her after she graduates.  

“I have multiple goals in mind, one being I could just go straight into the landscape architecture world, another being trying to continue to play soccer, whether that be overseas, but whatever opportunity arises. I will consider it hard to think about soccer ending,” she said.  

Catch Tucker and the Vandals in action in less than a week as they take on the Washinton State Cougars Wednesday, April 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Kibbie Dome.  

Jayden Barfuss can be reached at [email protected]