Lacrosse
Favorite memory competing in sports: Meeting so many people over the years and having so many teammates turn into long term friends.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: One time my teammate slapped my stick so hard that it snapped in half. I had to play with someone else’s stick for the rest of the game.
Music on iPod: I listen to just about everything, except country.
Future plans: Attend Temple University to major in Elementary Education (K-4) and play lacrosse.
Words to live by: “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.”
One goal before turning 30: Get a job teaching.
By Mary Jane Souder
Kaitlin Suzuki has turned her talents on the lacrosse field into a scholarship to Temple University, but ask the North Penn senior what she enjoys doing in her in spare time, and her answer might come as a bit of a surprise.
Suzuki, it turns out, volunteers her time at the A.M. Kulp Elementary School library after school.
“I love crafting and painting and all kinds of stuff, so I’m the unofficial library beautification committee,” she said. “Whenever they need a sign for their Reading Olympics, I do that. I made some flowers for spring, and they’re around the door. Once school is over and we have night practice, I like to go there. The kids are adorable.”
Suzuki also volunteers her time to A.M. Kulp’s knitting club.
“It sounds lame, and whenever I tell my friends, they say, ‘Oh, my grandma knits,’” she said. “I don’t sit home and knit all the time, but it’s really just helping out.
“These kids are really good at knitting. There’s an autistic girl there, and she was working on this elephant. She was so frustrated, but she got done with the elephant, and my mom and I are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve got to see this. It’s so great.’ It’s just rewarding to see the kids smile, and I have fun doing it.”
For Suzuki, working with children is more than just a pastime. It could well be her life’s work.
“I want to teach kids and help them out,” she said.
When Suzuki isn’t volunteering her time at A.M. Kulp, she will more than likely be found on the lacrosse field where she is playing her way back after a torn ACL ended her season prematurely last year.
It happened when Suzuki least expected it in the Maidens game at Pennridge.
“I thought I was doing pretty well in lacrosse and feeling good,” she said. “Then one wrong cut in warm-ups, and it all comes tumbling down.”
Suzuki initially didn’t think her injury – which occurred during a 1v1 drill during – was all that serious.
“I was going to goal, and Emily Schulze was on me,” she recalled. “All I did was go one way, and I fell down.
“I was like, ‘I think I just pulled a muscle.’ I was lying on the ground, and I hopped back up – I’m fine, I’m fine. I thought I could walk it off. I thought nothing was wrong.
“The trainer checked it out, and he told me there was a 40 percent chance that nothing was wrong. I don’t know where he came up with that statistic, but he was 60 percent wrong.”
A visit to Dr. Brady at CHOP – arranged through former trainer Leanne Edwards - confirmed that Suzuki had torn her ACL.
“He said, ‘You tore your ACL,’ and I was like, ‘Excuse me – what?’” she said. “I didn’t really believe him at the time. I guess it was just shock.
“It was really a bummer, but they told me ‘Oh, you’ll be back for your senior year,’ and I was really happy about that. You could see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Suzuki underwent surgery in May, and she was given clearance to return to action earlier this month.
“It was really hard to watch from the sidelines for a good 10 months, but coming back, it’s even more rewarding to play,” she said. “You just appreciate playing so much more.”
Suzuki’s absence left a void on the field when she went down last year.
“We were on a really nice roll,” coach Jami Wilus Behm said. “She was playing some of the best lacrosse I’ve seen from a high school player.
“Not every high school team has five or six great midfielders. We had three or four, and we were playing those three or four, so when she went down, we had to move people around to different positions. I think that hurt us the most.”
In addition to losing Suzuki’s ability to score goals, the Maidens also missed her calming presence on the field.
“People always think leadership is a person who’s yelling and talking,” Behm said. “With Kaitlin, it was never like that. She was our leader.
“She called our offensive plays. She knew how to read defenses, she knew what we should be doing on the field, and she could bring everybody together and communicate that to them. I think people listen to her because she wasn’t always in their faces, didn’t try to tell them what to do.”
For Suzuki, lacrosse was just one of many sports she played as a youngster growing up.
“My dad actually signed me up for pretty much every sport imaginable, so I played volleyball, soccer, softball, field hockey, and swimming for a little bit,” she said. “At the time, I was like, ‘Isn’t this a little much?’ My dad said, ‘You’ll thank me someday for it,’ and now I definitely do.”
Suzuki even tried basketball, but admits that at 5-3 she wasn’t made for that sport.
“I enjoyed everything I did, but lacrosse was definitely my favorite sport,” she said. “It was my favorite to play, and I was probably best at it of all of them.
“It was definitely different than anything else, and you fall in love with the small things about it.”
By ninth grade, the other sports were pretty much history, and Suzuki had served notice that she would be a force on the lacrosse field, earning a spot in the starting lineup as a freshman.
“When she first came along, she had decent lacrosse skills, but she started her freshman year because she was scrappy,” Behm said. “She got after the ball, and she could catch and throw better than most girls.
“She was more of a role player at the beginning. Then I think it kind of clicked with her. She dedicated herself to becoming an excellent lacrosse player.”
She did that by practicing on her own time.
“She was the type of girl that you don’t really see anymore where you’d look out on the field as you were driving by and someone would be shooting,” Behm said. “I would talk to Kaitlin the next day at school and say, ‘Were you out on the field?’
“She’d say, ‘Yeah, I took a bucket of balls, and I went out there shooting.’ She just kept improving, and every year she gained a little more confidence. She has an internal confidence, but she’s not a cocky player.”
When Suzuki’s brother Eric passed away her freshman year, it was lacrosse that helped her cope.
“I left his funeral luncheon early to go to practice that day,” she said. “Wilus was like, ‘Kait, you don’t have to come.’ I said, ‘No, no, I’ll be there. I just want to be there.’
“I’m not a very emotional person, and I don’t really like to talk about too many things. I really didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to play lacrosse and help me get my mind through it. It really was almost like therapy to get through things.”
That commitment and dedication to lacrosse carried over to the team’s early morning practices before school - drudgery to most but not to Suzuki.
“I actually loved those practices,” she said. “I was physically tired at school but mentally wide awake.”
Suzuki committed to Temple several weeks before tearing her ACL last April.
“All this happiness and then I fell off a cliff,” she said. “Of course it runs through your mind – it’s just a verbal commitment, and they can always take it back.
“(Head coach) Bonnie (Rosen) and (assistant coach) Jen (Wong) are such nice people, such good people,” Suzuki said. “When I was typing up the e-mail, I wasn’t really worried because I knew I would definitely be back in time for Temple with enough time to get back in shape, so I had faith in them that they would keep their verbal commitment. Even if they didn’t, I still would have gone to the school.”
Suzuki’s scholarship is safe, and the senior midfielder is working to get back in the shape she was in before her injury.
An excellent student, Suzuki plans to major in elementary education with a focus on special education.
“I volunteer for a Special Olympics basketball team, and I see these kids and how much enjoyment they get out of playing sports and how happy it makes them,” she said. “If people appreciated it as much as they did, it would totally change how they see sports.”
