Field Hockey
Favorite athlete: Lauren Crandall, CB East graduate who is currently the captain of the USA Women’s Field Hockey Team
Favorite team: Pittsburgh Steelers
Favorite memory competing in sports: When I scored my third hat trick of the 2012-13 season against our rival team, Central Bucks East.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: This past season, I had to unexpectedly leave the game to have a bug removed from my eye.
Music on iPod: Taylor Swift, Jason Mraz, Train
Future plans: To play Division One field hockey and major in engineering at Dartmouth College
Words to live by: ‘Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you can start.’ –Nido Qubein
One goal before turning 30: To see the Northern Lights
One thing people don’t know about me: I have to go to sleep with the television on.
By Mary Jane Souder
Heather Zezzo does it all and does it all extremely well.
“She’s got a whole lot going for her,” Central Bucks West field hockey coach Casey Hughes said. “She’s one of those people that will keep pushing themselves. Her possibilities are endless because of her leadership and the dedication she puts forth in everything she does. She’s going to go places.”
In truth, Zezzo is already going places.
The Central Bucks West senior excelled on the hockey field for a squad that capped a remarkable season by earning a berth in the state tournament. Zezzo, a captain, was one of the most dangerous offensive weapons in the league, scoring 25 goals to go along with five assists.
“As a hockey player, Heather is just a stud,” Hughes said. “She has very nice poise and control with the ball. She has great stick skills, great passing and shooting skills, and when the ball is in the circle, she could finish.”
A veteran of the elite Mystx Stealth club squad, Zezzo will be taking her talents to Dartmouth University next fall, but hockey is just the tip of the iceberg for a student-athlete who quite literally does it all.
Zezzo, a born leader, is the president of the student government at West, and she also excels in the classroom, boasting a 4.29 GPA despite a rigorous course load that includes four AP classes.
And that’s just the beginning.
Zezzo is as enterprising as she is talented. The West senior started her own business in ninth grade called Silver Slippers, a non-profit organization that teaches senior citizens ballroom dancing.
“My mom is a ballroom dancer, and when I was in seventh grade, she said, ‘Heather, you might be interested in this,’” Zezzo recalled. “I did a performance with one of her groups, and I realized I loved it.”
Any gratuities Zezzo receives at the end of the six-week course she donates to the orphanage in China where she spent the first five months of her life until she was adopted.
“It was great because my mom adopted me as a single mom,” Zezzo said. “It’s just my mom and me, and it’s like a girls’ party all the time.”
Zezzo also is a member of the USA Junior National Dragon Boat Team. She was introduced to dragon boat racing by a member of her club field hockey team who attends Council Rock North, and after going with her teammate to a club meeting, she was invited to try out for the national team.
That was in February 2011, and eight months later, Zezzo competed in the 2011 World Championships in Tampa and came home with three gold medals.
“It was a whirlwind kind of a thing, but it was a great experience,” she said.
Beginning in March, Zezzo will practice two or three times a week with her team, which is based out of Philadelphia and practices in the Schuylkill River. In the summer of 2013, she will travel to Budapest with the Junior National Team for the World Championships.
“It’s something people have not really heard about, but it’s the fastest growing sport in the U.S.,” Zezzo said. “It’s soon to be entered as an Olympic sport.
“It looks like crew, but there are 20 people in the boat, and you only take care of one side, so I’m a left paddler.”
Since September, Zezzo has been a paid intern at a structural engineering company based in Doylestown, Theta Consulting, and if it seems as though she couldn’t possibly have time to fit one more activity into her schedule, guess again.
Zezzo is an accomplished musician. She has been playing piano – her favorite instrument – for 12 years, and she also has played violin for seven years and taken two years of harp lessons. In 2010, she was a national piano guild winner, and she has been a member of the Delaware Valley String Orchestra for the past three years.
“If my friends had to describe me in one word, it would be active or busy but in a good way,” Zezzo said. “I have a lot of things going for me, but once I dedicate myself to something, I’m driven, I’m focused, and I’m in it fully 100 percent.”
Zezzo got her start in sports playing soccer but began playing field hockey in second grade with Doylestown Athletic Association. She has been part of the Mystx club program since she was 10 years old.
“It was phenomenal,” Zezzo said of the experience. “I think the best competition was within our own club, and being able to push yourself to that level, and playing against older and more experienced girls really helped me and challenged me to play better.”
When soccer moved to the fall, Zezzo opted to stay with hockey.
“Physically, I am better suited for field hockey than soccer,” the 5-3 midfielder said.
Zezzo stepped into the starting lineup the moment she joined the high school program as a sophomore, and she never left. Late last summer, Hughes was named the program’s third coach in three years.
“It was difficult having to go through three coaches,” Zezzo said. “It was never a solid program – it was very fragmented.
“Having to deal with that was difficult, but the good thing was having our same team players there. That’s what kept us solidified. Even the times this year when we had no coach, we were still there doing summer league and really trying to be a cohesive team.”
Coming as no surprise, Zezzo assumed a leadership role when the team was between coaches.
“Being a senior, I felt like we needed to take care of the rest of the team,” she said. “It was almost like they were our little siblings, and we had no parents, no guidance.
“That struggle brought us even closer, realizing we needed to stay together no matter who we ended up with as coach.
“When Mr. (Sean) Kelly told us we finally had a coach, we were just thankful. We thought we might not even be able to play this season. None of us expected that we would get to districts and states. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
In league play, the Bucks finished second only to district champion Central Bucks South, advancing to the district semifinals and moving on to states.
“It was great, it was outstanding,” Zezzo said. “When I was in 10th and 11 grades, it was fun, but to really succeed, and to see our (record) finally reflect who we were as athletes was a great feeling.”
The team’s improved passing, according to Zezzo, played a role in their success this season.
“We were really connecting, and that’s something we have never done before,” she said. “That’s really a big testament to coach Hughes’ work with us and really getting us together to work as a team.”
The Bucks’ senior captain, according to Hughes, leads by example.
“Heather works hard at practice, and the way she practices is the way she plays,” the Bucks’ first-year coach said. “She’s a very strong leader, and the younger players can look up to her. She’s friendly and outgoing, and at the same time, she’s very mature.
“She is dedicated, and it shows every single day at practice. She just modeled a CB West field hockey player that is dedicated to the program and the goals we had for the season.”
As for her remarkable offensive output this season, Zezzo admits it all came together.
“I finally realized where my place is to score, where I need to be to get that point,” she said. “I think it’s something that really comes with experience.”
Interestingly, Zezzo caught the eye of Dartmouth playing defensive back at an indoor tournament. She is projected to play either midfield or defense.
Zezzo selected Dartmouth from a impressive final list that included Brown, Cornell and Syracuse. Dartmouth actually was a late entry last March.
“I went to Dartmouth to a clinic, and after that weekend, coach (Amy) Fowler offered me a spot on the team,” Zezzo said. “I went to Dartmouth for a summer camp the summer before my junior year, and I fell in love.
“When I saw that campus - that’s exactly how I expected an Ivy League campus to look.”
Zezzo, who committed to Dartmouth in May, plans to major in engineering.
“She’s an awesome kid,” Hughes said. “She does it all, and she’s going to go far in life. She’s one of those people I have no doubt in my mind that down the road will be successful and happy and doing what she likes to do.”
