As a soccer coach, camp organizer and player, Kaitlyn Balfour’s life is consumed by the sport, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The 18-year-old was recently recruited by Carleton University for her successes as a player with Kingston United, Ottawa South United and the Regiopolis-Notre Dame Panthers. This coming year, she’ll play for the Carleton Ravens.

Balfour said the $5,000-a-year scholarship, which was confirmed in November, came as a surprise to her. It will cover her tuition for four years at Carleton, provided she keeps up a certain grade point average.

Having played for Ottawa South United for three years, she said she’s familiar with the Ottawa soccer clubs and has already met many players on the Carleton team.

"It’s like a second home for me," she said.

She left Tuesday for the Carleton training camp, an experience she anticipates to be even more gruelling than her schedule at Regiopolis-Notre Dame.

That’s quite a feat. While a student, she balanced school work with coaching for two soccer organizations — Kingston United and the Southeast Ontario Soccer Association (SOSA) — while also playing for Kingston United.

She’s hoping for similar challenges — as a player and a student — as she moves to university.

"I want to be challenged," she said. "I don’t like it to be easy for me."

At Kingston United, she coaches a U10 (under-10) team, which she began coaching when they were in the U9 age bracket.

"I train them once a week and then they have a game once a week as well," she said. At SOSA, meanwhile, she coaches boys and girls in the U12 to U15 age brackets.

SOSA players are selected from Kingston, Brockville and other nearby areas for their exceptional soccer skills. Balfour herself went through the program when she was younger.

She said her coach, Carlo Cannovan, introduced her to coaching for Kingston United and SOSA. Cannovan has known Balfour since she began playing competitively at nine years old.

"It was a way to repay the favour for coaching me for nine years," she said.

This summer, she’s running her own soccer camp for kids, to help pay for the remainder of her costs of attending Carleton. The camp, called KB Peak Performance, is held at Woodbine Park.

"I do a lot of sessions with them to improve their skills, and then once they do well during the training session, they get fun games at the end of it," Balfour said.

As she’s done for her entire high school career, Balfour will again balance soccer with school work as she enters a criminology program this September.

But the work ethic of a successful student isn’t too far off from a successful soccer player, she said, and she’s always pushed herself to succeed in both realms of her life.

"It’s a lot of commitment you have to have to soccer and to school," she said. "(With soccer), you need to work hard and train hard all the time, and it’s the same with school."