Soccer, Wrestling
Favorite athlete: My favorite athlete was Tuukka Rask, who is now retired. He was an amazing ice hockey goalie. This makes extra sense, since my favorite sports team is the Boston Bruins, which was his team. Tuukka is who I acquired my #40 from!
Favorite team: Boston Bruins
Favorite memory competing in sports: When I was playing with my PDA North team at a tournament and we went into PKs for first place. We ended up winning and my teammates all started screaming and hugging. We dumped ice on our coach when he wasn’t looking to celebrate.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: The funniest moment while playing would have to be when I dove and I got stuck upside down against the post.
Music on playlist: My music taste is very wide but one of the songs I like is “Roadtrip Home” by Odhran Murphy.
Future plans: My future plans are becoming an environmental engineer and making a huge impact on how environmentally friendly the country can become, but I’m going start off trying to make Philadelphia a cleaner place and more efficient.
Words to live by: Words I live by are, “Suck it up, buttercup,” which is something my family always says even when I was a kid; and, “Love is nothing without trust.”
One goal before turning 30: A goal before I turn 30 is NOT to tear my ACL.
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m really good at reading people (body language, tone, expressions, etc)
By Craig Ostroff
She may not have realized it at the time, but simply by showing up, Mariah Gazzara was proving her dedication and leadership to the Lower Moreland girls soccer team.
Though she was unable to play in her junior season due to an ankle injury, Gazzara still attended every practice and every game. To her, it was not about showing leadership or setting an example for the younger players.
To Gazzara, it was simply about remaining a part of the team she loved.
“I’m still on the team,” Gazzara said. “An injury’s not an excuse for not showing up. I would go and do what I could to help out. I would collect balls, watch and talk about what they could improve on when we all gathered up, give input whatever I could.”
But while Gazzara was focused on the specific ways she could help, her coach saw the bigger picture of what her mere presence brought to the team.
“I feel like so much of sports is showing up day after day, and the beauty of doing that is you get this reward that you get better, and you get to play in games,” said Lions’ coach Todd Hill. “But for a player injured for a full season, to show up every day without that reward, without the benefit of being able to play and be part of that, that’s a life lesson.
“I’m so proud of Mariah that she continued to show up for the team. That’s something that’s going to come into play for the rest of her life. Something she learned and modeled in sports is going to benefit her and those around her. She’s someone who is going to show up with or without that reward.”
Once she returned to the field for her senior campaign, Gazzara picked up where she left off, posting nine regular-season shutouts as Lower Moreland rolled to a 12-5-2 overall record and advanced to the second round of the PIAA District 1 Tournament.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, though. There is the occasional lingering ache from overuse, and she admits she doesn’t have full range of motion in her left ankle.
“You can’t really feel it during a game, but when you try to pass the ball, you can’t really fully turn your foot to receive a pass or give a pass,” she said. “There’s still some pain, but it’s more of an ache from all the practices or the game, I put a lot of pressure on it as a goalie.”
One thing that hasn’t changed despite the year away is the faith her teammates and coaches have in her abilities.
“We have the potential of being in any game against any opponent when Mariah’s in the game,” Hill said. “She can shut down an opponent.
“She is the quickest goalie I’ve ever coached. When a shot’s taken and you’re like, ‘Oh man, that’s absolutely a goal,’ she has the ability to get from one post to the other in a blink of an eye. She shocks you. She’s always able to get over and smother a ball that should have gone into the goal.”
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It started as a sprained ankle in seventh grade that Gazzara didn’t allow to heal properly. Over the last few years, she’d push through when there was pain until she was no longer able to do so.
“It caught up to me last year,” she said. “I couldn’t jump, it was just too painful. It was still preseason for soccer when I realized I couldn’t do anything because of how much pain I was in.”
First diagnosed with a muscle injury and advised to rest her ankle, Gazzara sought a second opinion when there was no improvement. Physical therapy didn’t help, either, so an MRI was prescribed, and it was revealed that two tendons in her ankle were damaged.
She had surgery the day before Thanksgiving of her junior year, meaning she sat out her entire junior soccer season while still not knowing if she’d ever be able to return to the field.
The physical limitations were difficult. But the mental and emotional toll that the injury took may have been harder on her.
“It was frustrating,” Gazzara said. “Soccer was something I looked forward to after school. And then after an intense practice, I’d feel motivated to do schoolwork. Not having that made it hard to get motivation to do anything.
“I think it was more a mental thing for me. I could handle not being able to do things on my feet, but it’s really hard mentally when you lose something you love to do and you watch someone else take your position and you can’t do anything about it.”
Gazzara started rehab in January, and by April, said she felt she was close to where she needed to be in order to return to the net.
“They had to put a brace in my ankle so it wouldn’t happen again,” she said. “The brace is still in there. It always will be. My trainer was checking my ankles said that there’s not much of a difference in my range of motion, but there’s definitely a small difference between both.”
With her return this season, Gazzara not only provided a standout, experienced goalkeeper, but also continued to serve as a role model for the younger players, who also deal with injuries and setbacks.
“This year has not been without its challenges for Mariah,” Hill said. “She continues to recover from her surgery and injuries, and the fact that she continues to fight and battle and show up is significant to the rest of the team. They know what she’s been through and they see her showing up.”
Hill said he’s noticed that in her final year in the net, Gazarra has committed to being a more vocal leader.
“I think she’d probably prefer to be the quiet leader,” he said. “But I’ve watched her commit to the discomfort of speaking up, being the voice, even if that’s not her nature. That adversity she went through, she learned that skill that she’s going to lead not just with actions but with her voice as well.
“I feel like I really watched her blossom in this last year. There was a commitment on her end, ‘I’m going to lead, both in presence and voice.’ Part of the beauty of sport, you sometimes have to stretch yourself in uncomfortable ways. But that’s going play into other aspects of life as well, that though her default may be to be a quiet person, she now has the tools and the willingness she needs to speak up.”
It’s all made for a triumphant return and final season for Gazzara, who’s been playing soccer for as long as she can remember and first stepped into the cage around age 7. She was involved in numerous sports when she was younger, including softball and played ice hockey on a boys team for several years.
“Playing ice hockey with the boys taught me speed, agility, and physicality,” she said. “I loved every minute of it. Even during COVID, when we had to get dressed and warm up in the parking lots away from each other. We played our games on the rinks without spectators. Our families watched our games on an IPad in their cars.”
As a sophomore, Gazzara ran track. As a senior, she will step onto the mats for her first season as part of the girls wrestling team.
“I wanted to try something that was not like soccer,” she said. “It’s more a solo sport but you still have a team. In soccer, you have to rely on your defense to support you, and you’re always counting on your teammates to help you out. I kind of want to give myself the confidence that I can do something by myself and not have to rely on other people.
“I don’t really know anything about wrestling. My one friend, she was asking me to join. I looked into it, found it interesting, and it seems like it’ll be a good fit. I’m looking forward to it.”
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Gazzara was really hoping for senioritis to have set in at this point, but jokes that “I was trying to make this an easy year, then they put a bunch of classes on my schedule.” She’s taking AP Art, Honors Calculus and Honors British English among her courseload.
She’s played alto saxophone since the fifth grade and plays in the Lower Moreland wind ensemble. She’s had the opportunity to perform with older brother Nicholas, who played the trumpet, in middle school and in her freshman and sophomore years in the high school Jazz Band. And once her athletic seasons end, she’s considering joining the art club or environmental club.
Gazzara’s soccer career – which has taken her up and down the East Coast and even saw her play by the Art Museum steps as a youngster – will next lead her to the Reading area. She will spend the next four years at Penn State Berks, playing soccer and studying environmental engineering. And she’ll be close enough that her biggest supporters – her parents, grandmother, and three brothers – can watch her play.
“I was so picky with finding a campus and a team and my major,” Gazzara said. “When their coach reached out, we were talking about how their team is very competitive but very close. The campus is very small. I chose a Division III school. I wanted to stay close. I didn’t like big campuses, I find them overwhelming, so I knew I wanted something smaller with smaller classes, and with everything here with soccer and my major, this was a perfect fit.”
And while she may not have been thinking at the time about the impact of showing up even when injured, it’s something she considers when she thinks about how she hopes to be remembered by those teammates who will be returning to the Lower Moreland soccer field.
“I want them to remember me as someone who always showed up and was always committed to the team,” she said. “I was not going anywhere. Giving up was not an option. Just because you have one drawback, you don’t just give up. The team still cares about you and supports you. So you have to be there to support them as well.”
Hill agrees that Gazzara’s presence has always epitomized what Lower Moreland soccer is about.
“Thinking of the culture we have as a team, about team-first, hard work and showing up each day,” he said. “We lose a very visible example of what our culture is all about – faithfully showing up, competing at the highest level, serving the team. We lose that daily example to us, and (Berks) is going to get someone who’s going to work really hard, show up day in and day out, not complain, be a good teammate, and be a great soccer player.”
But more than anything, there’s one word that Hill keeps coming back to when discussing Gazzara.
Brave.
“You have to be brave to be a goalkeeper, especially at a competitive level,” Hill said. “I’ve watched Mariah be brave this year when she was working her way back in and dealing with lingering pain from the injury. It’s not easy to jump back in. I’m grateful she’s been brave and she models that for the team and for me.
“And for someone who always tended to be on the quiet side, and I think maybe for goalkeepers in particular, there can be that feeling of ‘I’m on an island, on my own.’ I’ve watched her intentionally invite other people into her journey so that she doesn’t have to walk that road alone, and inviting other people in is brave. I’m proud of her both and off the field.”