School: Hatboro-Horsham
Field Hockey, Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Lindsey Vonn
Favorite team: Philadelphia Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: "Beating CB East in lacrosse my freshman year to win our league for the first time in 36 years."
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: "When I played soccer, a girl on the other team had a breakaway toward our goal, and our goalie just stood there and started screaming because she didn't want her to shoot. We were just cracking up because it was so funny!"
Music of iPod: "Everything. But I have a new love for country when I found out i'd be going to Nashville!"
Future plans: Play lacrosse at Vanderbilt and graduate in four years
Words to live by: "You must play boldly to win."
One goal before turning 30: "Travel all over the world and meet as many new people as I can."
One thing people don't know about me: "If I could pick any job in the world, it would be to become a professional skier."
Sarah Tustin might have had a future in musical theatre.
If, that is, the Hatboro-Horsham senior hadn’t been hit with a severe case of stage fright when it came time to sing her solos.
“I would get so nervous, it wasn’t even fun,” Tustin said. “I like public speaking, I love acting, and I loved being in the ensemble just dancing and singing, but singing (solos) gets to me.”
So an acting career that began when she earned the part of a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz as a third grader came to an abrupt halt in eighth grade after she landed a lead part in Cinderella and endured a serious case of stage fright.
“When it came time for the actual production, I didn’t know how much stage fright I would have,” Tustin said. “I just couldn’t sing in front of people. Opening night came, and I didn’t mess up or run off the stage, but I was so scared to sing.”
On the final day of the play, Tustin – who took voice lessons for several years - lost her voice and spent the day drinking tea. She survived the final performance, but it marked the end of her brief stage career.
“I never sang again,” she said. “I don’t sing in front of people. I could never do it again.
“I was literally terrified. I decided – this is not worth it, so I stuck with sports.”
Coach Marie Schmucker is certainly glad she did. Tustin went on to become a four-year varsity player in both field hockey and lacrosse.
“She’s the total package,” the Hatters’ coach said. “She’s an intellect, she’s a leader on and off the field, and she is a role model for the underclassmen.
“She’s a very smart player on the field, and she’s very, very smart in the classroom. She’s matured as a player and a person, and she is a really down to earth kid. She’s a hard worker and is just a great kid.”
In a storybook ending, Tustin has parlayed her lacrosse talents into a scholarship to Vanderbilt University.
Not a bad ending for a student-athlete who grew up in South Philadelphia and never really considered becoming involved in sports.
“My family wasn’t into sports,” Tustin said matter-of-factly.
All that changed when she moved to Horsham the summer before first grade. Tustin followed her friends’ lead and became involved in the community basketball, soccer and softball programs. It wasn’t long before she became involved in travel soccer.
In fourth grade, she joined Upper Dublin’s community lacrosse program – Crooked Cross.
“I got into it because of the girls that played on my Horsham soccer team,” she said. “A lot of the soccer girls played on Crooked Cross. I started playing and really loved it.”
In sixth grade, Tustin added field hockey to her repertoire of sports, and by eighth grade, she was playing club lacrosse with the Phantastix program. A year later, she began playing club hockey for the Mystix.
It was while playing for Phantastix that Tustin – who later switched to Ultimate Lacrosse Club - first began to consider the idea of playing collegiate lacrosse.
“I remember going to their recruiting sessions,” she said. “I made varsity as a freshman, and that was a big deal. I was like, ‘You know what – it would be kind of sweet if I could play in college,’ so then it was between field hockey and lacrosse.
“I went to every camp – I went to at least four camps a summer up until last summer. I started in random camps like Nichols College in Massachusetts where they had both field hockey and lacrosse.”
Mystix fell by the wayside in 10th grade, and Tustin began to focus solely on lacrosse.
“I love indoor field hockey, but my sophomore year I realized my height was such an advantage in lacrosse, and in field hockey – I was growing, so my back just killed all the time, and I’m like ‘Why do I do this?’” Tustin said. “I realized there was no sense in me trying to play field hockey. I definitely wanted to play lacrosse.”
It turned out to be a wise choice. Tustin began sending out letters of interest her sophomore year,
“Upkeep with all the e-mails was literally such a big stress,” she said. “It’s basically another job. You have to stay on top of it and keep e-mailing them, make sure they don’t think you’re losing interest.”
The arduous process of filling out questionnaires began in earnest in Tustin’s junior year, and that’s when she received her first e-mail from Vanderbilt coach Cathy Swezey. That winter Tustin attended a winter camp at the University of North Carolina, and her mother suggested she check out Vanderbilt.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know’ because I loved Georgetown, but I was like, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll go,’” Tustin said. “I went down there and actually fell in love, and that was my number one school since.
“If I hadn’t gotten that e-mail from coach Swezey, who knows what would have happened.”
Tustin’s final list was an impressive one that included Vanderbilt, Cornell, Yale and Notre Dame. As the final list suggests, academics were a key piece in Tustin’s decision-making process.
“Before I saw myself going D-1 to play lacrosse, I didn’t realize how much lacrosse could help you get into a school,” she said. “I really worked my butt off in high school and middle school.
“If you asked any of my friends – in middle school, I worried about everything. I was constantly worrying. I had to get A’s in everything.”
Tustin had nothing less than an A in middle school, but as a freshman, she got a B-plus in geometry and – in her own words – ‘totally freaked out.’
She recuperated quite nicely and went on to take accelerated math and a full course load of honors classes. As a junior, Tustin – who has a 3.89 GPA (5.99 weighted) and is ranked 13th out of a class of 422 - enrolled in AP Biology and this year has AP Statistics and Calculus.
“If you look at all the top lacrosse schools, they’re all the top schools,” she said.
Vanderbilt – ranked in the top 10 in lacrosse this spring - certainly falls into that category. Tustin will be undeclared her freshman year.
“I’ve been throwing around pre-med and political science with a minor in finance,” she said. “It’s such a wide spectrum, but I do have time. Right now I have no idea. I really can’t decide.”
If Schmucker had her way, Tustin – who plays low attack - would play first home at Vanderbilt.
“Come on – she’s six feet tall,” the Hatters’ coach said. “All she has to do is extend her arms, and she needs to stay big out there. That’s a wonderful thing.”
A captain of both the hockey and lacrosse teams, Tustin is a natural leader.
“The kids really look up to her,” Schmucker said. “Nothing is ever a problem to Sarah. You ask her to do something, and she goes above and beyond.
“You have a player like that, and you know she’s going to motivate other players, and that’s a key. When you have a young team, you need great leadership, and she is a great leader. She actually makes other players step up.”
In field hockey, Tustin started out as a forward but ended up playing defense as well.
“She played anywhere I wanted her to play,” Schmucker said. “She’s very versatile, and she’s very accommodating. She’s a pleasure to have on the field.”
As a freshman under Schmucker, Tustin played on a varsity lacrosse team that won a conference crown – the school’s first in 36 years - and advanced to the second round of the playoffs.
The following two years, Schmucker took a leave of absence to wage her own personal battle with breast cancer.
“It was really eye-opening,” Tustin said. “She was an amazing coach, and all of a sudden, this breast cancer bomb dropped on us our sophomore year.
“She is the healthiest person I know. She works out like no other – how could this happen to her and not everyone else? Then to see the stages she went through – it was so surreal.”
After two sub-par years in lacrosse – last year the Hatters were 2-18, the Hatters are back to their winning ways and find themselves in a battle for second place in the Continental Conference standings.
“We pulled through because we really wanted to do it for her since this is her first year back,” Tustin said. “We know how hard it was for her, and we didn’t want her to have a losing team.
“If you would tell me now that she had breast cancer – sometimes you just forget. She doesn’t seem like she went through that. She’s still the same coach that she was before. She didn’t get soft at all. She always said to us, ‘I can’t wait to get back on the field,’ and if she wants to be out here this badly, so do we.”
Although she is enjoying her final high school days and weeks, Tustin is all but counting the days until she heads off to Vanderbilt.
“I cannot tell you how excited I am,” she said. “Every day I sit in class and I’m like, ‘I’m going to Vanderbilt soon.’ It is the best feeling to know I’m going there because that was my dream school and that was what I wanted to strive for. To know that I was able to – it’s awesome.”
