Soccer
Favorite memory competing in sports: Having a great and successful win against Strath Haven in penalty kicks to buy us an automatic bid into the state tournament.
Music on iPod: Brittney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry
Future plans: Go to college and become a pediatrician
Words to live by: “Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.”
One goal before turning 30: Earn my medical degree
One thing people don’t know about me: I have played my whole senior year as a captain on a completely ruptured ACL
By Mary Jane Souder
Paige Marcinkowski, according to her coach, might well be one of the most underrated goalkeepers in the league.
“You look at our record,” said Central Bucks East coach Paul Eisold, whose soccer team advanced to the state semifinals. “The bottom line is – without Paige, we don’t get where we are today.”
Marcinkowski’s performances speak for themselves. With the senior captain in goal, the Patriots, who finished second to Pennridge in the Continental Conference, did not allow a goal in 12 of 14 conference games. They finished the season with 16 shutouts.
“The best thing about her as a goalkeeper is her desire to play the game,” Eisold said. “She’s a competitor, and things kind of came natural to Paige.
“She’s very good technically, and she has leadership qualities.”
Making Marcinkowki’s accomplishments even more impressive is the fact that she played her entire senior season on a completely ruptured ACL, an injury that occurred in March while playing basketball.
“I just came down on it wrong,” she said. “When I first did it, I was like, ‘I just bruised it,’ and when I got the results back from the MRI, I was kind of in shock because the day after it happened I worked, I was running around, going to the gym and thinking nothing was wrong other than a bad bruise.
“Then it hit me that I actually messed up my knee pretty bad, but I just thought, ‘I love the sport. I’m going to see if I can try and do it and help to be part of the success of the team.’”
Marcinkowski went through a month and a half of physical therapy to strengthen the muscles around her anterior cruciate ligament and made daily trips to the gym to strengthen her leg. Her determination to return was driven by her love of the game and also the fact that she had been elected a captain by her peers last November.
“It was a hard decision to make whether or not to come back,” she said. “I figured – test it out, strengthen it and see if I could handle it.
“I didn’t want to let my team down, and that was basically the thing – I had to decide if I was going to play to make sure I wasn’t a disadvantage to the team.”
Marcinkowski was anything but a disadvantage, making contributions both on and off the field.
“She’s a great leader,” Eisold said. “She’s a silent leader, but she’s big in the net.”
A four-year varsity starter, Marcinkowski admits she was surprised to find herself in goal as a freshman.
“I was very nervous,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to start. As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize I was starting until the first game came around and I was starting with all the seniors – we had seven or eight seniors.
“I don’t even think I told my parents that I was considered for varsity because I just started playing right away.”
The Patriots won just three games that fall – the last three games of the season.
“She went through some bumps and bruises,” Eisold said. “We just couldn’t win.”
“We paid our dues,” Marcinkowski said. “We shared the wins and losses.”
The following year the Patriots were 6-1 out of the gate in league play but finished the year 7-6-1. Last year, East finished second to Pennridge in the conference standings and advanced to the first round of states. It was during her junior season that Marcinkowski’s character was put to the test.
“She didn’t start every game last year,” Eisold said. “That was a decision made by me.
“We had lost some games, and we made a decision to change things around. Paige went from a three-year starter to kind of sharing time. That’s a whole other mental piece. There were some games she didn’t play, and some of them were big games.
“I spoke with Paige and explained to her the whys and hows. I told her I was always behind her, and she smiled and said, ‘Whatever you need me to do coach.’ She handled it like a champ. It was one of those things, and she persevered. She handled it maturely, she handled it with respect. She said, ‘Absolutely, I understand. Whatever is best for the team is what I will do.’”
For Marcinkowski, it was simply a matter of staying strong.
“If I’m not best for the team, he’s going to play who is best,” she said. “Me and my competitor had our different strengths and different weaknesses.
“I think that’ s what he was trying to get out – in certain games, we need certain technical abilities, and in certain games, we don’t. I know we pushed each other in practice. That’s what I think helped us out was that we both wanted it. We both had the desire. We’re still friends. It was just a matter of what was best for the team. It didn’t bother me other than I wanted to be on the field playing. That’s really it.”
Marcinkowski has been playing soccer since she was a youngster.
“I tried everything – I played soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, and I swam,” she said.
When she was in fifth grade, Marcinkowski joined Buckingham United. She started her soccer career as a field player.
“One of my teammates didn’t want to be a goalie any more, and they knew I played basketball, so they kind of just threw me in,” she said. “They knew I had hand-eye coordination, and I wasn’t really afraid of the ball, and I just kind of accepted the challenge and was like, ‘Okay, I’ll try it.’
“I had a lot of learning to do. I was more used to playing with my feet, but over the years, I grew and gained experience and became a better goalkeeper.”
Marcinkowski saved her best for last, closing out her high school career with a trip to the state semifinals.
“It was awesome,” she said. “We came into the season, and our goal was to beat our record and how far we went last year.
“I’m so happy with my teammates. They’re like my family. We’ve been together since August 12. We’ve had so much success, but we’ve also had some failures. We win as a team, we lose as a team.”
Ask Marcinkowski if she can imagine missing out on her final high school season, and she is matter of fact.
“I would have had to accept my position as one of the captains from the sidelines,” she said. “If I couldn’t do it, then that’s how it would have had to have gone.”
Now that the season is over, Marcinkowski will undergo surgery to repair her torn ACL, and whether or not she plays at the collegiate level depends on her recovery.
An excellent student, she plans to major in pre-med with her sights set on becoming a pediatrician. Penn State, Delaware, Temple, Pitt and James Madison are on her college list.
“I like helping people, I like interacting with people, and I really like kids,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, so I figured out pediatrician was the way to go.”
