My name is Chris Rindov.
This is my story.
I see a lot of myself in Chris.
I see a young man who is taking full advantage of his family's
search for a better life for him.
Both my parents are from Sofia, Bulgaria, and both of them are probably
my two biggest influences.
It was just my husband and I coming here, not knowing what to expect,
but we were hoping that everything will be for the good of our kids.
Soccer is something that my husband obviously played on the street
when he was Chris's age, and we're glad that he landed in soccer.
We were fully committed to support him, go to every single day to practice.
I don't think they've ever missed any one of my games.
That was a matter of whatever the reason.
It's whatever the game is, we try to drive, fly...
Obviously, they love that I play soccer, but their number one
priority was for me to come here and get a nice, quality education.
Obviously, being in Montgomery County is a great public school district,
so I was very fortunate to be able to kind of lead up through there.
The engineering program in Maryland is very good,
so being able to stay in-state was definitely a big benefit.
My original plan was to go on just the club team
and kind of just have a good time with the guys there.
My club coach kind of suggested to me to go reach out to the coaches
and see if I could kind of schedule
like a meeting to just see if there's any potential to walk on.
We got an email from his club coach and said, Hey,
here's a young man who's been admitted to Maryland.
He's going to study engineering.
You know, he's a very good player that just been under the radar.
Give them
a look at that point, it was kind of going back and forth,
figuring out what the best time for him to get out on campus was.
And it just so happened that we were in camps.
So we immediately got a video on them, invited him to come to our camp,
said, look, it's hard it's hard to be come into preseason at our level.
Once you come for a day or two at the camp and we'll have a good look at you.
So I ended up going to one of the camps and I spent like the whole day there.
And immediately you look at his
his physique and you go, Wow, this kid's put together quite well.
Then you talk to him and go, he's a really nice
young man, and then he plays a little bit and you go
Why haven't we seen him?
He liked what he saw the first day, so he brought me back the second day.
And then after the second day, he kind of talked with me a little bit
so that they had to see if they could open up a 29th.
roster spot and then they got it open.
And then the third day is when he offered me this spot on the team.
We have a lot of e-mails like that.
99% of them aren't good enough.
I know obviously when I came in, I was never really looked at
as a starting option at all in certain situations in games.
My freshman year
you thought I could come on and maybe make an impact,
or whether we needed some defensive help or offensive help.
You know, I played bits and pieces
and I mean, I said, Chris, you need to work on this, this and this.
While he worked on this, this and this and this, this and this and this,
this and this again,
to the point where I had to actually say, hey, Chris, look, you need to
start working with other people.
You can't do everything on your own.
And he understood that.
So then all of a sudden he brings his best friends out
and how they're serving balls and doing different things.
Me and one of my teammates, Isaac, we really started to go
a lot harder in training and after training we would spend
pretty much our hour
and a half every day after we would play some Intrasquad games.
And he was starting to really show that he's going to be special.
And then in the spring 2021 season
of the 2020 year, I mean, he was a guy we couldn't take off the field
and he started the majority of our games this spring.
And I think you can see,
especially towards the end of that spring, his confidence had grown so much,
he was becoming a little bit more vocal within the team.
Miles and I would look at each other as he would speak in team huddles
and things like that, kind of seeing, all right,
there is really stepping into us into his own leadership wise.
On his junior year last year,
we knew he was going to be a big piece for the team but didn't know how much
it was going to take on a leadership role and kind of be part of the group.
And he really stepped into it and there was there was no way
we could take him off the field, much less not have him in leadership.
I think Chris is so genuine when he speaks.
I think he makes people want to be better because they see the way
that he carries himself and the way that he approaches everyday life.
Right now, even as captain, he's
the first person on the field, the last person to leave.
He makes sure locker room is clean.
There's is no job or detail
that’s beneath him, no matter if he's a senior or a captain of the team.
Eli Crognale, Eric Matzelevich, Johannes Bergmann,
those are the guys that kind of influence me.
And I kind of took after what they did.
Obviously, they stayed after practice, got extra work and extra treatment.
We got a little lucky with Chris.
It's a great story.
I mean, fantastic young man, great player, got a chance to lead this team
to some special things this year and I think play beyond college.