Field-Hockey, Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Ron Gronkowski
Favorite team: New England Patriots (you’re welcome, dad)
Favorite memory competing in sports: When I scored the winning goal in OT against Norristown my sophomore year. I think it might have been one of the first wins of my high school careers, it was so awesome.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When I chipped my tooth during preseason of lacrosse my junior year. My filling glows in the dark now at all the dances, it’s hilarious.
Music on iPod: “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen,Taylor Swift, ASAP Rocky. I like everything.
Future plans: I would love to go to a great school and play club field hockey. I want to study Communications, Journalism and/or Political Science
Words to live by: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
One goal before turning 30: Have a house on Cape Cod and become best friends with Taylor Swift!
One thing people don’t know about me: I’ve watched the complete series of The Office literally four times through and I’m on my fifth.
By Mary Jane Souder
It’s not unusual to hear about student-athletes who do it all, but if there’s a category for someone who goes beyond that, Maura O’Leary would certainly fit the bill.
The Upper Moreland senior is a four-year varsity player in both field hockey and lacrosse. She’s been president of her high school class for four years, she is co-president of UM’s Key Club and she is a student ambassador to the Home and School Association. O’Leary headed the homecoming committee, and she is a member of the school’s Mini-THON committee.
A member of the National Honor Society, she’s enrolled in three AP classes this year. O’Leary has organized fundraisers, food and coat drives, and she has volunteered at the Making Strides Breast Cancer Walk for the past three years with the fourth coming up soon. She volunteers her time to coach youth field hockey and points to serving meals at Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia as a highlight of her volunteer experience.
That’s enough to make anyone’s head spin, but there’s more – and this is where O’Leary’s schedule goes over-the-top crazy.
The Upper Moreland senior still finds time to play lead roles in Upper Moreland’s fall dramas and spring musicals. Every single year. This fall, she is playing Abigail in “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
“It’s tough,” she said. “When we get back from an away game, I’ll get off the bus, and I’ll run into play practice, and I’ll be in play practice until eight at night.
“That’s kind of hard, but the drama isn’t as tolling as the spring musical during lacrosse season. That’s really hard, but it’s so worth it. I love both so much that I couldn’t imagine giving either one up. I love it.”
O’Leary wasn’t always so sure it would work out to do both sports and theater.
“I always coached her with the summer lacrosse team, and she said, ‘Mrs. Remmey, I won’t be able to play lacrosse anymore because I’m really into the musical and I’m into a lot of other stuff,’” UM lacrosse coach Pam Remmey said. “I said, ‘You know what – you’re the type of kid that can do it all. You can do it all, and you will learn time management.’
“I really encouraged her to play sports and be in the school musical and be a class officer and get great grades. She’s the kind of kid who can do it all. She does everything, and she does it all with a smile on her face and with a positive attitude. It’s incredible.”
O’Leary also received the blessing to do both from her field hockey coach.
“She’s one of those kids who’s involved in everything but always puts her best into everything,” coach Karen Grossi said. “She’s not just doing it to do it, she’s putting her all into it and does her best with it, but at the same time, she manages her time so well that you would never know that she does all that stuff if you didn’t know her.
“You never hear her complain. I don’t know how she does it. Her interests are so varied – it’s sports, it’s drama, it’s class council, and she’s also an excellent student.”
O’Leary is quick to credit her family for their influence.
“I have such a special relationship with my family, and I’m really lucky for that,” she said. “My parents are more than awesome and are always there for me, no matter how many mental breakdowns I have. My sister is really supportive too. I was on the field hockey team with her my freshman year, and it was a blast.
“My friends are also really important to me. It’s so awesome to be able to play with them in field hockey and lacrosse – it’s the greatest part of high school.”
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O’Leary got her start in sports in a rather unorthodox manner, opting to give sports a try after undergoing an operation on her stomach when she was in third grade.
“I actually got really sick, and I was very sedentary,” she said. “I was sitting down a lot (after the surgery), and when I recovered, I started playing basketball.
“I just got really, really into sports because I’m actually really competitive. I played basketball, and I tried soccer. All my friends had always played, but I wasn’t that into it. After the surgery, it was like night and day. I loved sports, I loved competing and I made so many new friends from it. It was so awesome.”
One of those new friends – Delaney Smith - entered the picture when she began playing lacrosse in fourth grade.
“We’re like a tag team,” said O’Leary, who has been teammates with Smith ever since. “She’s actually been one of my best friends since we started lacrosse, and it’s so awesome to be able to have her on the field.
“It’s one of the most rewarding things. Every time she does something good, every time I do something good – just to have her there is so incredible.”
O’Leary played basketball through middle school when another passion – theater – entered the picture.
“It started in sixth grade,” she said. “I just tried out.
“All my friends were in it, and I wanted to see if I’d be any good. I got the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz and I thought, ‘This is kind of cool.’ I ended up being pretty good at it. I loved it, and I kept doing it and going deeper into it.”
O’Leary, who has been in a locally produced television commercial, points to playing Bonnie in Anything Goes her sophomore year as her favorite role.
“She had this New York accent, and she was kind of ditsy,” O’Leary said. “It was so much fun.”
Last year, she played Brooke in Legally Blonde and reveled in the opportunity to sing while jumping rope.
“It was kind of my athletic side and musical side put together,” she said. “It was really the perfect part for me.”
As for time management, O’Leary seems to have it down to a science.
“I’ve gotten really good at balancing my time luckily because if not I’d really go crazy,” she said. “I don’t find it that hard because I’m really enjoying everything that I’m doing, so it’s not like it’s annoying having to go to meetings.
“I really like helping the school out and doing service with Key Club. Sometimes I’ll miss a meeting due to a game or rehearsal, but people usually really understand. They know I have a lot invested in a whole bunch of different things, but I really do care about those things.”
The summer after her sophomore year, O’Leary took her interest in service one step further when she went on a 10-day service trip to Costa Rica with Global Leadership Adventure. Her group helped build a playground for a local school and renovated a church.
“It’s really transformative,” O’Leary said of the experience. “I live in a pretty small area – a small school district, so you’re used to seeing the same people all the time and you’re very used to a certain way of life.
“Going to Costa Rica, I didn’t have my phone, I wasn’t connected to Instagram, I wasn’t connected to what was going on back home. I just really got to experience new people and new cultures. I got to form a lot of different relationships I don’t have at home.
“Even though I didn’t speak the language of the people that we were working with – you knew what you were doing was impacting their lives. It made me understand the importance of community and empathy and getting in other people’s shoes and understanding what it’s like in other parts of the world.”
***
This fall, O’Leary – a four-year varsity starter - is one of four seniors who have been the cornerstone of the field hockey program’s turnaround.
Three short years ago, the Bears were winless in league play and managed just one win the entire season. Last year, they finished second to Plymouth Whitemarsh in the SOL American Conference and advanced to districts for the first time since 2008. This year, they have won 11 of their last 12 games after a 0-3 start.
“It’s beyond words,” O’Leary said of the turnaround. “I feel like we’re so lucky because we’re working so hard, and we all just really want it.
“The respect that we’re getting from our classmates - just walking around and having Upper Moreland something to be really proud of is so awesome, and it makes it all worth it. My freshman and sophomore year we were losing, and all of a sudden my junior and senior year getting a taste of winning - it was like going from nothing to everything. It’s been incredible.”
O’Leary is a tri-captain of this year’s successful squad, receiving a vote from every single player -.
“You want her on the team because of her ability, but her attitude, her work ethic and the way she gets along with the other girls is amazing,” Grossi said. “She hasn’t scored a lot this year, but she’s been one of the major reasons we’ve gotten the ball into a scoring position.
“She was an inner and we moved her out to the wing. She just fell into that spot and is doing an excellent job. We can have her play middie when someone needs a break. She’s just an all-around player.”
O’Leary also excels on the lacrosse field, but she brings much more than just her skills to the squad.
“Her energy level is fantastic, and she is a positive ray of light every day,” Remmey said. “Whatever you ask her to do, she will try to do.
“She also has a lot of grit, and we’ve talked about grit a lot on my team. She might get down for a minute or two, but she’ll find a way to fight back to raise her level of play and to raise the level of those around her.
“She’s a real team player, she doesn’t care about her own stats or anything like that. She is completely for the team, and she’s always a positive factor out there.”
When it comes to O’Leary’s future, she is uncertain of her major, but the possibilities are endless.
“I’m good at communication, speaking in public, so maybe something with that, maybe politics or journalism,” she said. “I’ll figure it out, but something in the liberal arts.”
For now, O’Leary is busy ‘doing it all.’
“At the bigger schools, you’re either an athlete or you’re in the musical or you’re in the band, but Upper Moreland is a small school, so you can do it all,” Remmey said. “We encourage them to do it all.”
That encouragement from Remmey has paid big dividends for O’Leary.
“I’m having the best time – the perfect senior year,” she said.
