Field Hockey
Favorite athlete: Joel Embiid
Favorite team: Sixers
Favorite memory: My whole senior season
Most embarrassing/funniest moment while competing in sports: One indoor tournament my fake tooth came out and I had to play the whole day without a front tooth.
Music on your playlist: Anything SZA
Future plans: Attend college as a psychology major
Favorite motto: “Trust the process”
Goal before 30: Travel the world
One thing people don't know about me: I played violin and performed at Carnegie Hall when I was 10.
By Mary Jane Souder
Melissa Sessler was living out the dream. Or at least it was the dream of many student-athletes.
The North Penn senior was committed to take her considerable talents on the hockey field to St. Joseph’s University. Until, that is, the gifted defensive back realized it wasn’t her dream.
Not that she didn’t like St. Joe’s, she did, but playing Division 1 field hockey began to feel like a burden she didn’t want or need, so Sessler made what might seem like an unpopular decision – she decommitted.
“The whole commitment process is so demanding,” Sessler said. “It’s so much. Having to go to all these clinics, having to talk to them all the time and having to do all these phone calls, talking to all the coaches – it takes so much out of you.
“And after a while, I just got so burned out with field hockey, and I felt like D-1 was going to be way too much for me.”
That didn’t mean it was an easy decision to decommit. After all, as a product of one of the region’s most elite club programs, WC Eagles, Sessler had accomplished the ultimate goal, a goal she initially believed was hers as well until it became a reality.
“You don’t ever hear about people decommitting," she said. "Everyone said, ‘Oh my god, you’re D-1. Why would you ever want to change that? So many people want to be D-1. Why would you ever take that away from yourself?’ It was definitely weird.
“We started looking into some D-3 schools. I was like - I could either decommit and go D-3 and just not be as crazy with my schedule, or I could not play at all for college and just go somewhere else and not have the sport. This whole past summer, we were looking into this stuff. Finally, a couple of months ago, I ended up decommitting.”
St. Joe’s coach Hannah Prince, Sessler’s first coach at WC Eagles, was understanding.
“I had a phone call with her and told her, ‘Hey, I think this isn’t going to be the best for me,’” Sessler said. “I didn’t want to be where I’m on the fence about it because that’s not right for her either when she could have someone who is fully into it.
“She was definitely supportive about it. It was really nice, but at that point, I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to be playing hockey or not. I almost didn’t play for the high school team this year because I was so burned out, but then I talked to some friends, and they were like – ‘It’s your senior year, just play, it will be fine.’ You feel a little pressure because – okay, I’ve played all these years. Why would I quit my senior year? It could be my last year too.
“That was another thing – since I decommitted, this could have been my last season if I don’t end up playing in college. I’m like – I should just play, so I ended up playing. Before when I would be training – the training sessions are so important because you’re preparing to go Division 1, so it was so much more stressful. Taking that away – it just makes it so much more fun where you’re just there to be with your friends and have a good time.”
It was a decision Sessler – elected captain by her teammates last spring – has not regretted.
“I told her – it’s a really brave thing to say, ‘I don’t think this is for me anymore,’” North Penn coach Shannon McCracken said. “I knew where she was with the sport, how hard it was on her, how she was burned out and wasn’t enjoying it much anymore.
“She plays club and all the showcases, all the tournaments every weekend – I think it’s tough to balance it all in high school. She made the tough decision.”
The journey begins
Sessler didn’t grow up competing in sports. Two years of dance was pretty much the extent of it until her childhood friends – twins Riley and Kerry O’Donnell – introduced her to the sport when she was in sixth grade.
“Their whole family played, so their mom was trying to get more people to play,” Sessler said. “They brought me out in their cul-de-sac and we started playing. I remember my mom picked me up that day, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, mom, I need to play,’ and after that I just started playing. They were showing me very basic stuff, and I was not really good.”
It didn’t take long before Sessler was good. She joined her middle school team and spent one year playing for Souderton Strikers before switching to WC Eagles.
When she arrived at the high school, Sessler found herself on the varsity during a COVID-shortened freshman season.
“She just had solid stick skills, and she had a really good knowledge of the game,” McCracken said. “She right away made an impact on our varsity team.
“She plays defense, and she’s a really good leader back there because she sees the game really well, so she knows when it’s important to step up, when it’s important to delay and disrupt. She has really good instincts as a defender, and she is such a hard worker.”
The script was going as planned until Sessler’s junior season.
“It was a little bit of a struggle,” she said. “Two years ago, the friends that had initially brought me into field hockey were on the team, so I was really good friends with them.
“They ended up leaving our school, so it was a struggle last year because I wasn’t that close with anyone. That was another reason this year I was worried going into it because it just wasn’t that fun for me.”
There was also the grueling recruiting process.
“With WC, everyone was always thinking about college,” Sessler said. “Probably from eighth grade, we had to look into schools and start thinking about it because you have to go to these recruiting tournaments so coaches could already start seeing you.
“I started talking to schools. June 15 is the day coaches can start talking to you. I hadn’t looked at St. Joe’s before then. Hannah Prince, the coach there now, was my first coach at WC, so I started looking into that because I really liked her. I ended up committing in October, and at the time I was so excited because it was so cool to be going D-1.”
That euphoria wore off quickly, and Sessler’s struggles were not lost on McCracken.
“I could tell she didn’t have that same sparkle in her eyes that she did as a freshman and sophomore,” the Knights’ coach said. “Her teammates voted her as one of the captains. I think they saw in her that she’s one of our top players, and they all looked up to her as a role model.”
That also put an unusual twist on the idea of walking away from the sport.
“They announce captains in (spring), and you don’t ever hear about a captain not playing,” Sessler said. “It was so strange.”
Sessler opted to play, and the senior captain had a key role in the Knights’ successful season that came to an early end of the second round of the District 1 3A Tournament. She has no regrets.
“Definitely not,” she said. “I’m so happy I played this year. The team – we always were friends with each other, but this year was so different. We all just connected to each other so well.
“They really all became my best friends this year. So having this connection along with having such a great season with them – it was so hard to have this be the end. We didn’t know going into the last game how it was going to be the end. It was definitely really tough. We were actually bawling our eyes out.”
For McCracken, seeing Sessler regain her love of the sport was especially gratifying.
“What I saw – and it was really cool to witness – was growth this season as she really became a strong leader for us,” the Knights’ coach said. “The way she would start to speak up in team talks and timeouts and water breaks. Her teammates really listened to her and valued her. It was really cool to see the sparkle come back.”
McCracken goes on to recall North Penn’s 5-0 win at Pennridge late in the season.
“Everything just really clicked that night,” she said. “It was one of those nights where they just played perfect hockey, and after the game, Melissa was like, ‘I got goosebumps, that was just so exciting to be part of.’
“She wasn’t that type of kid a year or two before. She was always steady and consistent, but I didn’t really hear or see that emotion from her. For her to say that, I was like, ‘Wow, this kid is really enjoying this season.’ That progressed into the playoffs. She found a love for the sport again, a lot of that was through her teammates and the way this team got along so well.”
Looking ahead
Sessler acknowledges that her future is uncertain, but it’s a good uncertain.
“I’m still definitely open to playing hockey,” she said.
The biggest question mark for Sessler was not whether she’d play hockey at the next level – that will work itself out, but rather what major she would choose.
“I literally had no idea what I wanted to be,” she said. “At first, I was looking into nursing, but I ended up deciding that’s not what I wanted to do.
“Last year I took AP psych, and I was just interested in it, but any time I looked into jobs with psychology I didn’t love them. This year I’m taking forensic science, and I find that real interesting too.”
Active in the school’s Key Club, Sessler – an excellent student - plans to major in psychology with her sights set on a job in forensic psychiatry, and while her final field hockey chapter may or may not have been written, there’s no mistaking the biggest decision of her young life – decommitting to play Division 1 – was the right one for Sessler.
“In our team huddle after our last game, she spoke up and said, ‘I just want to tell you guys that I don’t think a lot of you realize how hard last season was for me and field hockey was for me. I lost my love for it, and this season reminded me how much I love being on a team, how much I love the sport, and it was all because of you guys,’” McCracken said. “It was awesome. I cry at Hallmark movies, but I’m pretty steady with the kids. When she said that, I started to tear up.
“I love field hockey, and I love to coach, but ultimately, I want these kids to have the best experience and I want the kids to feel like they know what it is to be part of a team. For her to say that - it took the sting of the loss away. What a win that is.
“She’s going to go out in the world a better person because of her experience, and that’s ultimately the best part of coaching. She’s very well spoken, she’s very mature, and she’s just a neat kid. Just to see her progress over the course of this season and just love hockey again – she’s still thinking about maybe playing D3, but I feel so good that even if she doesn’t move on, she had a last great experience with the sport.”
