Field Hockey
Favorite athlete: Bryson Stott
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating North Penn my senior season. Going into that game everyone thought we were going to lose. We played so well together as a team and showed us our potential, and it was just a great feeling.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: My teammates making a bet to fall over after making a goal against New Hope-Solebury
Music on playlist: Country music, Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs
Future plans: Go to Slippery Rock University to study biology pre-dental and then dental school
Word to live by: “You only live once.”
One goal before turning 30: Become a dentist
One thing people don’t know about me: I love hiking with my family
By Mary Jane Souder
Avery McCann is living proof that you really can do it all.
It’s a capacity the Central Bucks East senior apparently comes by honestly.
At her recent college signing, the Central Bucks East senior pointed to her mother as her biggest role model.
“My mom works hard and wears so many hats, but flawlessly juggles all of them,” she said of her mother, Allyson McCann.
In truth, Avery could just as easily have been describing herself. The East senior wears many hats, and she wears them all very well.
McCann was a captain and first team All-SOL selection for the field hockey squad last fall, and she has turned her talents on the hockey field into a scholarship to continue her career at Slippery Rock University.
Since sophomore year, she has been studying dental science at Middle Bucks Institute of Technology (MBIT) and last year passed her radiology exam.
“I’m X-ray certified which pretty much means I can work in any dental office in the State of Pennsylvania and take x-rays and perform all the dental assisting tasks,” McCann said.
McCann began working at a local dental office at the beginning of last summer and has continued as part of MBIT’s coop program. She is president of HOSA at MBIT and finished second in the HOSA state competition in dental science, going on to finish in the top 20 of 180 students in the national/international competition.
A member of the National Honor Society and National Technical Honor Society, McCann takes a courseload of honors classes during her mornings at East. She is a member of the local National Charities League Board, and she also adds the improbable past time of showing cows to her remarkable resume (more on that later).
“She is the most interesting person,” East field hockey coach Emma Rosenthal said. “Every single thing she does – she succeeds. How cool to be a field hockey player, a star dentistry student, who also shows cows.”
Ask McCann about her non-stop schedule, and she acknowledges – she wouldn’t want it any other way.
“That’s what keeps me going,” she said. “I love being busy and the feeling of accomplishment after completing something and knowing it’s gonna make me successful in the future.
“Everyone tells me I have a very high work ethic, but I just enjoy being busy and the fulfillment everything brings me.”
Field hockey from the start
As a youngster, McCann got a taste of soccer and gymnastics, but from the start, it was always hockey. She was introduced to the sport through Doylestown Athletic Association.
“I started in third or fourth grade, and that’s where I learned to love it,” she said.
She joined FSC on the club circuit in sixth grade and began playing year-round.
“Club started to get a lot more competitive – it turned into not just for fun but also for the competitiveness,” McCann said.
When she arrived at high school, McCann was one of three freshmen pulled up to play jayvee or varsity.
“Avery was the first freshman I met,” said Rosenthal, who took over the helm McCann’s freshman year. “She showed up the first day of preseason with her neighbor who was a senior. I met with the seniors before practice, and little Avery stood off to the side and waited to come up and say hi.”
“From the beginning, she just stood out – besides her incredible stick skills from day one, she’s always played with immense heart. You could see it in every single drill, every single run.”
McCann admits she was battling a case of nerves, and it was during the required timed mile that the then freshman found herself battling an asthma attack.
“She had to stop and get her inhaler,” Rosenthal recalled. “She was never giving up, she would have crawled to that finish line if I didn’t pull her off and said – you can stop. I didn’t care that she stopped. It wasn’t about that.
“She came up afterwards and said, ‘Can I make it up?’ There was always – ‘What more can I do?’ And it wasn’t just for her, but it was for her teammates. She just puts 110 percent into absolutely everything. She cares so much.”
McCann admits she was concerned after failing to complete the required timed run.
“I have bad asthma,” she said. “It’s gotten better over the years, but it was so, so hot that day. Asthma attacks are very scary especially in front of a whole group of people you don’t know.
“It was like – ‘Oh no, am I going to make the team?’ It was crazy.”
McCann played JV as a freshman but was part of the varsity ever since.
“I’ve had the pleasure of coaching her for four years,” Rosenthal said. “Just to watch her grow into the woman she is now – it’s been amazing to see. She is a hard worker, and she is humble.
“She’s a defender and she is willing to put her body on the line for her team.”
McCann found herself facing the ultimate test during her field hockey team’s preseason back in August, juggling her job at the dental office with two-a-days.
“It was actually crazy because the office was like – we can’t lose you yet,” McCann said. “So I woke up at 6:30, and I would go to the horse barn because I take care of horses as well. I would go to the horse barn, and then I would go right to practice and straight from practice I would have my scrubs in the car.
“I would change in the car, go to work for six hours in the middle of the day, go back to practice because we had two-a-days because it was preseason, so I was changing in my car on my way to and from practice. After practice, I would go back to the horse barn to feed the horses again, so I would leave my house at 6:30 and wouldn’t get home until 9. It was exhausting.”
Exhausting perhaps, but it didn’t stand in the way of another standout season that saw McCann earn first team All-SOL honors.
A bump in the road
McCann’s high school hockey career came to an unexpectedly abrupt end in East’s District 1 3A opener at Neshaminy when she was defending University of Delaware-bound Kasey Rieger, a teammate on her club team.
“She pretty much just broke my ankles – she went left and back right,” McCann said. “I tried turning too fast – I feel like I do that turn every game, multiple times a game, and it just happened that one game that I went down.”
Down perhaps but not ready to call it a day.
“She’s laying on the field, and she was about to prove she could still run,” Rosenthal said. “She wanted to finish that game out.
“I saw that same determined person I saw freshman year. She was laying down on the sidelines in searing pain still directing everybody on the field.”
The pop McCann heard when she went down turned out to be a torn ACL. She had surgery to repair the tear nearly a month ago.
“It was tough,” she said. “I switched club teams, so this would have been my first year with my new club team, and I was really looking forward to the indoor season.
“We don’t have that in college field hockey, so this would have been my last indoor season. I’m thinking – ‘Am I going to be ready going to college? This is going to set me back.’
“It’s definitely tough, but my college coaches have been so supportive. They pretty much were like – nothing changes. I still have my scholarship. I still have everything. I’ll actually be back to playing around June.”
Less than a month removed from surgery, McCann has already found a way to ensure her skills remain sharp.
“I’ve still been doing some stickwork,” she said. “I’ve been to the field a couple of times just doing stationary stickwork.”
Although things are going well since surgery, there were some rough spots.
“You’re supposed to have a nerve block during surgery, and my nerve block didn’t work so as soon as I came out of general anesthesia, I felt everything, so that was really tough,” McCann said. “I was on quite a bit of meds at the beginning. Now it’s better.”
A whole lot better, according to the East senior.
“I went to my follow-up appointment, and I got my stitches out, and they were like – you can slowly ease off the crutches and slowly ease off your brace – whatever you feel comfortable with and pretty much put that process up to me and what I was comfortable with my stability,” McCann said. “As soon as I left that appointment, I’m like – I’m done with the crutches.
“So I kept my brace on for maybe another day. And then I just took my brace off. I’m walking almost normal now. I walked into my first PT session, and they about had a heart attack. They were like – where is your brace? I said – my surgeon told me I didn’t need it. They said – put it back on for the first couple minutes.
“By the end of the session I had my brace off, and they were like – you’re totally good. They said they’ve never seen anybody come off the brace that fast. They said normally at least six weeks, and I was just over two-and-a-half. It is definitely going well.”
Showing the cows
McCann grew up wanting a horse, and although she has a job feeding horses, she never got the horse she wanted. She has, however, found her niche ‘showing’ cows while spending a lot of time during her summer break on the farm of her dad, Robert Wilson, in Tunkhannock.
“He has about 200 cows, and I work with them and show them, so that’s like breaking them to lead – kind of like a dog on a leash almost,” McCann said. “There are cow shows. There’s some at county fairs and then there’s actual cow shows. It’s like a dog show almost.
“It’s actually quite a bit of work, washing them and keeping them clean. It’s crazy how dumb they are. You give them so much space, and they’ll still lay in their poop.
“They’re huge, so breaking them to lead is really difficult. When it’s show time, we take them to these barns, and then you have to stay there the whole week. I’ve actually slept in my car for a week because you can’t leave them there.”
McCann’s cows have been on the receiving end of plenty of ribbons.
“Last year, I actually had one reserve grand champion – that’s like second place out of the whole show,” she said. “They’re broken up into age groups. We got first in our age group, first in our division and then reserve grand champion.”
And what do the judges look for in a cow?
“Not too fat, the taller the better, the bigger the better, a straight back – not too fragile looking, if you will,” McCann said. “It’s also based on their blood line. You can pretty much tell if a cow is going to do well based on their parents.”
As for her personal favorites – right now it’s Sandy and Maple.
“I begged my dad for so long to get me a horse to ride, and he wouldn’t,” McCann said. “He’s like, ‘There’s a nice cow, so go and ride it,’ and crazy as this sounds – I actually have a couple of cows that I could ride.
“You get quite a bond with them when you show them and spend that much time with them. They follow you around in the field, they run up to you. It’s good. They’re really nice.”
A bright future
With her eyes on one day becoming a dentist, McCann will major biology/pre-dental at Slippery Rock and then attend dental school.
And what sparked her interest in dentistry?
“I don’t know – everybody always asks me this,” McCann said. “Now, I love to help people feel confident in their smiles, but before, it was really I just wanted to go to the tech school. I knew I wanted to have hands-on learning.
“It was between dental and medical – like nursing. I ended up choosing dental because I was like – I don’t know much about teeth, and I just wanted to learn more. Now I fell in love with it. There’s so much to learn about teeth. It’s almost artistic as well because you have to match the color, the shape, the pressure – everything. It’s kind of crazy.”
When it came time to choose a college, Slippery Rock University felt like a perfect fit.
“I decided around ninth grade I wasn’t ready to only play hockey four more years, and I wanted to keep playing as long as I could,” McCann said. “My club coaches were great in the process – Kelly Broadway had a lot of great connections with college coaches.
“I was talking to a couple of schools, but Slippery Rock just felt the best for me. I loved the campus and the balance between the student and athlete. It was a good fit.”
Listening to Rosenthal tell it, Slippery Rock has landed someone who just might give new meaning to the term student-athlete.
“She is so multi-faceted,” the East coach said. “A cool thing that stood out to me – at the signing day, they talk about who was their biggest inspiration, and she said her mom was because she wears so many different hats, and she is so good at everything she does.
“Avery is the same exact way. She’s incredible on the hockey field, but she’s at MBIT, she is working at a dentist’s office half a day and is going to school the other half. She is working with patients. She was a national finalist for a dental award and is a top dental student.
“Her other cool thing is she shows cows and horses. She goes up to New York on weekends, she would go to the cow show, she would sleep in her car, and she would drive back and play a game the next day. She’s an absolutely resilient kid, and this (torn ACL) is something she is going to bounce back from. She’s going to be stronger for it. She’s the best.”
