Patton kicker Queen signs to play football at Lyon College

Sometimes it pays to try something new.

Patton senior Colsyn Queen started playing soccer when he was 4 years old, culminating in him becoming the starting goalkeeper for the Panthers last fall.

The team ultimately earned 20 wins, captured the Western Piedmont 3A/4A Conference title, and reached the third round of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 3A state playoffs. As for Queen, he received All-WPC recognition after helping the Panthers limit their opposition to 21 goals in 25 matches, with Patton recording 12 shutouts along the way.

But it isn’t soccer that Queen will be playing at the next level.

Instead, he will join the football team at Lyon College in Batesville, Ark., after also serving as the Panthers’ kicker over the past two years despite never previously playing the sport.

Queen signed his letter of intent on Wednesday, meaning he will soon be attending an NCAA Division III institution that is located approximately 700 miles from Patton.

“A couple weeks ago, we went over and toured the college and decided to commit,” said Queen, who added that having the chance to earn immediate playing time was a major factor in choosing Lyon.

“I’ve never been one that wanted to sit on the bench, so I’ve got the opportunity to play,” stated Queen. “And then also the campus was gorgeous, and I’m very academically driven. They have a really great academic program with pre-med, so that was another big thing I was looking at.”

After studying pre-med for four years at Lyon, Queen plans to enter the military and “finish my medical journey there.”

But before he goes off to college in the fall, Queen took time on Wednesday to reflect on a different journey: becoming a football player.

“My junior year, the football team was out on the field just practicing, trying to find a kicker,” said Queen. “I thought I’d try it out, ended up falling in love with it, and ended up succeeding pretty well.”

Although Patton didn’t field a varsity team his junior year, Queen began to think about being a college kicker very early into his gridiron career.

“It was probably the second game I played,” said Queen. “I’d always kicked the ball pretty hard, and that translated over to football. I started kicking the ball, and I got a lot of reaction. A lot of people were telling me, ‘Listen, this could go somewhere.’

“I hadn’t really been looked at too much for soccer, and I was like, ‘Well, I want to go to college. I don’t want to pay for college, but I want to go to college.’ So, opportunities came to me, I trained really hard, and here we are.”

As a senior football player, Queen was named WPC specialist of the year and was an All-Burke County honorable mention selection. He finished with 13 touchbacks on 20 kickoffs, punted 29 times for a 33.6-yard average, made all eight of his extra-point attempts, and nailed a 44-yard field goal, the second-longest in program history.

Nonetheless, Queen’s fondest memories of playing sports at Patton are “the relationships I got to build,” and he is also thankful for those who have pushed him to be the best version of himself. Queen mentioned his father, his teachers, and Panthers athletic director and assistant football coach Rob Gregory as some of his biggest personal influences.

“I’ve been coaching football for over 30 years, and he’s probably got one of the strongest legs that I’ve seen,” Patton head football coach Billy Whisenant said of Queen. “He’s just extremely raw. He did go to a few camps that helped him out, but I think he’ll see that as he gets there and gets some personalized instruction … he’s gonna fly off the charts real quick.

“He is very accurate for no more than what he practiced with us. We usually got him about once or twice a week (due to having to split time with soccer), and to be as accurate as he was, that shows a lot of talent.”

Lyon competes in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, and the Scots are coming off a 2-7 season (1-4 in SCAC) under sixth-year head coach Chris Douglas.