Field Hockey
Favorite athlete: Julie Ertz
Favorite team: The Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Making the state playoffs my sophomore year after being undefeated league champions during the regular season.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Last week I accidentally aerialed the ball backwards and out of bounds in the last two minutes of an intense game that we were only winning 1-0. The whole crowd gasped the loudest I have ever heard.
Music on your playlist: I listen to lots of rap and pop music! I love anything by Post Malone and Tory Lanez.
Future plans: I am planning to attend Brown University to continue my academic and athletic career playing Division 1 field hockey. Post undergrad, I aspire to go to medical school and eventually become an orthopedic surgeon!
Words to live by: "In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity"- Albert Einstein
One goal before turning 30: Perform my first surgery!
One thing people don't know about me: I absolutely love to weightlift! My dad introduced me to the gym in seventh grade, and I have not stopped since then. I am very fortunate to be a part of an excellent athletic performance gym called Iron Athlete!
By Mary Jane Souder
It’s a story Ashley Paturzo loves to tell.
The unlikely story of how the Souderton senior – in the final stages of recuperating from a torn ACL she suffered the summer prior to her junior year - had all but turned the page on playing collegiate field hockey. At least at the Division 1 level.
“An ACL injury or any injury is just completely mentally draining,” Paturzo said. “It’s a mental battle way more than it is a physical battle.
“During my recovery process, I started to question - do I even want to play field hockey in college anymore? Do I go to a really good college and just focus on my academics? There were a lot of thoughts going on in my mind, and again, I wasn’t really talking to many schools anymore, just a couple of D3 programs.”
But then her father had an idea.
“It’s actually funny,” Paturzo said. “My dad had taken me down south last April to look at bunch of the big universities, just for college tours without even considering field hockey.
“A couple days before – I give total credit to my dad for this – he said, ‘Let’s email coaches, give them your film, your stats, your academics. Why not take a long shot?’
“Coach Sue (Casciato) helped write up this really great email recommendation, and I gave her a list of schools that I’d consider, and she sent it out to them. We just said, ‘Okay, we’ll see happens.’”
What happened was nothing short of remarkable.
“So, on this big college tour in the south, I got an email from a couple of coaches, and I got an email from the coach from Brown,” Paturzo said. “I had emailed her before, so she had replied to one of my prior emails when I was still playing.
“She said, ‘We just got a recommendation from your coach. We have a clinic in a couple of weeks. In our 2024 recruiting class - we probably have (a spot for) one more recruit.’”
Paturzo – in the final stages of rehab – seized the opportunity.
“I still wasn’t cleared from my ACL injury, but I had just started going to practices again,” she said. “I had really started ramping up my running and my cutting.
“I thought my parents weren’t going to let me go because I wasn’t cleared, but they said, ‘You know what – if you feel confident in your therapy, why not go.’ I ended up going to Brown and the clinic.
“I met the coaches, and the coach talked to me afterwards and said, ‘We like the way you play, we like your film.’ A couple of the recruits from the class of ’24 were there, and I think that really helped playing side by side with them. She said, ‘We’d like to have you back for an official visit.’ A couple weeks later, I went on an official visit, and I got offered a spot.”
The decision was an easy one for Paturzo.
“I fell in love with the school,” she said. “I just can’t say enough about the coaches. I love the coaching staff, I love their style of play and the program they’re building. Talking with the girls on the official visit, you could just tell that they love to be there and that the team really had a bond that was something special. It’s everything I could want in a school – Division 1 athletics, I get to continue playing field hockey – something I’ve done forever, and I get to be at the highest level of academics possible.”
It's pretty much a dream scenario for Paturzo, whose excellence in the classroom is underscored by the fact that she got a 1550 on her SATs.
“At that point, I hadn’t been talking to anyone else or thinking of playing,” she said. “It just worked out. I love telling people the story because things always find a way to work out. You’re going to end up where it’s best for you.
“If you asked me when I tore my ACL if I would be committed to play at Brown, I would have laughed at you because it was an exhausting journey, and I’m so grateful it ended up working out.”
Back to the beginning
Paturzo’s journey in field hockey had its beginning in first grade when she signed up for the Indian Valley Junior Stars League.
“At the time, I had just gotten into multiple sports,” she said. “I have three brothers – I come from a family of sports and athletics, so I was playing basketball and softball at the time, but I just kind of fell in love with field hockey.”
When she was nine years old, she joined the Souderton Strikers U10 and began playing indoor hockey.
“That’s when I started really taking it seriously,” she said.
In middle school, she exchanged softball for lacrosse, but by the time she was in eighth grade, hockey was her sport of choice.
“I absolutely loved it,” she said. “I loved the team, playing on grass isn’t always the best, but I was still playing indoor. My love for field hockey had really grown over other sports.”
In eighth grade, Paturzo played for Casciato’s U16 indoor team.
“Ash has always been super, super mature,” the Souderton field hockey coach said. “I remember saying partway through the indoor season in eighth grade – if you come in shape next year (to the high school tryouts), there are a few openings.”
Paturzo hasn’t forgotten the tryouts.
“Coach Sue and I had sort of a relationship, which was great going into freshman year, but I was absolutely terrified,” she said. “Coming into the high school, I was scared to play.
“I was so nervous, but I think that also fueled my want to be the best that I could be coming in freshman year, so I did lots of hockey clinics over the summer.”
Casciato’s preseason training included a timed mile to see where everybody stood.
“I think I had given Ashley a specific time, and I still remember her standing up at the line with all the other ninth grades, and she was setting her watch,” the Souderton coach said. “Her mom had gone to Wal-Mart or somewhere and gotten her a watch so she could keep track of her splits.”
Paturzo not only made the time but also the varsity.
“She’s one of those people who’s a student of the game,” Casciato said. “She was on my indoor team, and usually we have a four-game tournament with plenty of down time between games.
“The other girls are getting snacks or sitting in circles or just generally goofing around. I would watch other games and lots of times Ashley and her mom were sitting and watching other games, and she was making observations about things. She was always a student of the game.”
Paturzo earned a starting nod at right defensive back freshman year.
“There were probably seven girls in my class because we did not have a big class going in,” Paturzo said. “The upperclassmen were so welcoming. I could tell Souderton field hockey had a team bond from the start.
“Freshman year, I was pretty terrified every game – I hated making mistakes. The coach is a pretty vocal coach, so sometimes I took a lot of criticism which made me a completely better player my sophomore year. The biggest thing from my freshman year to my play sophomore year was just an utter confidence change.”
From the outset, Paturzo was a player who took coaching and used it to become a better player.
“I remember one game specifically – it was a home game – I don’t even know if she left the field,” Casciato said. “She started asking me questions, and we sat and talked about playing right back for 10 minutes.”
Paturzo followed her freshman season by playing indoor and JPOL (Junior Premier Outdoor League) with USA Hockey in the spring and attending clinics and camps over the summer.
“She was a good player as a freshman – she became a great player as a sophomore,” Casciato said. “It was amazing how much she improved.”
From a frightened freshman to a standout sophomore – Paturzo – who played defensive sweeper her sophomore year - was on the fast track. Souderton – the undefeated SOL Colonial Division champions - advanced to the state tournament, and Paturzo earned first team all-league.
The unexpected setback
The wheels were in motion for Paturzo to take the next step in the recruiting process.
“I had started setting up my entire summer with recruiting clinics because a lot of people say the summer before junior year is the biggest recruiting period,” she said. “I knew I wanted to apply to an academic school, so I was going to a lot of Ivy League camps, I was going to a lot of high level schools, a lot of really good schools that were Division 3. I was still deciding between Division 1 and Division 3.”
The last day of school sophomore year, Paturzo was scheduled to play in Souderton’s summer league game at Upper Perk.
“It’s sometimes hard to get players because people are on vacations and stuff,” Casciato said. “I said, ‘Hey, do you want to play in the jayvee game. I don’t have enough players, and if you’re going to come up anyway, do you want to play in the jayvee game.’”
Patruzo willingly agreed to play both JV and varsity.
“I was dribbling the ball up the field in the JV game – it was about a third of the way through the game, and I just stepped weird,” she said. “I felt my knee kind of hyper extend.
“Everybody always tells me – ‘You fell in slow motion.’ I felt like I slowly sat on the ground and was like, ‘Huh, that kind of felt weird,’ so I stood up and I walked off the field, which you don’t really hear with many people who tear their ACLs. I even considered playing in the varsity game, but Coach Sue was like, ‘No, you just rest.’ No one thought it was serious. Everyone thought it was just a hyper extension.”
A visit to the ER the next day did nothing to change that belief.
“They said, ‘It’s probably just hyper extended or sprained, but get an MRI just in case,” Paturzo said. “So, I got an MRI a week later, and I completely ruptured my ACL. That was just devastating.
“I remember calling Coach Sue and having a talk with her because our team was lining up to have such a great season again, and I was so excited.”
All of Paturzo’s summer field hockey plans went out the window.
“I had to let field hockey go,” she said. “Junior year came around, and I was so thankful because Coach Sue gave me a really good opportunity and told me I was still part of the team, and I can still contribute.
“I’m so grateful she pretty much let me help coach. I stood on the sidelines of every game by the coaches. I helped out at practice both varsity and all the JV practices as well. Honestly, it gave me such a new perspective of the game. Just getting to watch game, to analyze it from the sideline and to see what things work – it made me a better player, in my opinion.
“First of all, I gained such an appreciation for coaching. When your coaches are telling you things, they’re the ones that see everything the best – they truly are. You may see something on the field – they probably see it better than you from the sidelines. A lot of times we’re trained to do everything so repetitively. It opened my eyes up a little bit more this year when I came back. I think I gained a whole new perspective.”
A welcome return to hockey
Paturzo is a captain and leader of this year’s young squad.
“She’s definitely respected,” Casciato said. “The younger players text her and ask her questions. They know she knows the game, they know she works super hard at practice, they know she’s had success.
“I learned this watching my daughter play at West Chester – at halftime especially, I don’t even go talk to the team until I let them talk among themselves. If we have five minutes or seven minutes, they go to the corner of the field, they talk and try to figure things out and then my assistant and I might go talk for 30 seconds or a minute. This year, it’s Ashley doing the talking. Last year, it was Ang (Borisow), and the year before that, it was Lauren Kenah. We leave it to them to figure it out. They’ve heard me say the same things over and over again. This gives them ownership.”
The Indians, who lost almost all of their scoring from last year’s SOL Colonial Division championship squad, opened the season 0-5-1 after six games but then won eight in a row in an amazing turnaround. They are once again very much back in the district playoff picture.
“It was obviously pretty disheartening and very difficult because it wasn’t necessarily that we were playing poorly,” Paturzo said of the slow start. “Things just weren’t clicking, and that’s what happens when you have a younger team. A lot of our team is freshmen and sophomores, and we lost Ava Jones, who was a prolific scorer, to an injury. We were struggling to score.
“Coming in the season, obviously, we knew we lost a lot, and we did. We truly did, but my opinion personally coming back was – I just want to play field hockey again. I’d lost an entire season, and I wanted to do the best of my ability to help my team succeed. Yes, we lost some games, and we weren’t the same team we were in years prior, but I was just excited to step on that field again.”
And for Paturzo, that was a win.
“Just even practice – I love going to practice because I love to play the sport,” she said. “It’s such a great group of girls. There have been issues sometimes in the past because it’s girls in high school – you can’t expect anything else, but truly this year it’s just a special team in that everyone is just so sweet and willing to work hard that it’s just a completely different dynamic. I think everyone just wants to see everyone else succeed, so this year has been a super fun year for me.”
Although Paturzo is passionate about hockey, it’s just one small piece of her very busy life.
The Souderton senior – who boasts a 5.2 GPA and is in the top 5 percent of her class - is an elite student with a course load of honors and AP classes. She is a member of Souderton’s athletic leadership council, she is involved in student government and is a member of the National Honors Society. She is president of a club called FIMRC, which is Foundations for International Medical Relief of Children.
“We raise money for underprivileged children around the world,” she said.
At Brown, Paturzo plans to major in biology and is going the pre-med route with her sights set on becoming a surgeon, possibly in orthopedics – an interest she had even before her injury. She will also be competing in a sport she loves.
“Obviously, her basic hockey skills are good, but it’s just her desire,” Casciato said. “Some people are just natural athletes. I don’t know if she’s a completely natural athlete or if she’s worked so hard to make herself a really good hockey player.
“I have no doubt that Ash will be successful at Brown. She has an amazing work ethic and sets high standards for herself. It’s been a real pleasure coaching her the last five years and watching her grow into an outstanding player and team leader.”
