FLORENCE'S TOP FLASH WORKING HARD TO FIND SUCCESS

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

"From its humble beginnings as a foundry town creating pipes and fittings for the cities of the world to its most recent endeavors creating steel wire for the building industry, Florence Township workers have long passed on the grit and determination of success through hard work." -- Florence, N.J. municipal website

FLORENCE TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- The bend of the Delaware River between Trenton and Philadelphia has seen more than its share of prosperity and despair since Florence Township was formed in 1872.

Florence is responsible for the steel cabling you see on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, and the steel cabling you don't see in elevators in skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building.

By 1982, when the Roebling Steel site finally closed, thousands of industrial jobs had been lost.

The town of about 10,000 never lost its work ethic, especially in athletic competition. Its legendary football program played behind Florence Memorial High School, which overlooked the river. The field, with its propensity for poor drainage, was called simply, "The Pit."

The field hockey team was one of several programs without a competition surface on its own campus. The team would play some years in a public park in the nearby borough of Roebling, or at a grass field near the municipal building.

Today, Florence's hockey program enjoys a Bermuda grass pitch near an artificial lake next to its three-year-old main campus, located across Rt. 130 from the center of town where the old high school still stands. But despite the peripatetic nature of the hockey team, it has engineered some legendary athletic feats by dint of determination and will.

In 1994,  the Flashes, with an interim head coach, played dead-even with a West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.) team with 10 future Division I players in its starting lineup for 59 minutes and 41 seconds before surrendering the game-winner.

A couple of years later, the Florence program had less than 20 players, but still played a full JV schedule — playing short every match. The JV coach at the time was Gina Smith, who has been the Florence head coach since 1998. She is a disciple of legendary Trenton State/The College of New Jersey field hockey and lacrosse coach Sharon Pfluger, and has harnessed the town's characteristics into her coaching philosophy.

"I always tell them, 'You can't teach heart; I think it's inbred in you, and I know your parents gave it to you,' " Gina Smith says.

Fewer times was there more heart shown than in 1992, when the Flashes won the program's only state championship, led by Diane and Mary Ann Carey, the younger sisters of the current Florence coach. But it's another member of the Carey family that is threatening to upend all expectations and notions of the development of the top-notch field hockey player.

Lexi Smith is Gina Carey-Smith's first-born daughter. During the 2009 season, she scored 44 goals. As a ninth-grader.

Thing is, it wasn't supposed to be this way, according to her mother.

"To be honest, (husband) Jeff and I started her off in soccer, because I didn't ever want her to have to live in my shadow," Gina Smith said. "I just wanted her to be Alexis Smith, not 'the daughter of Gina Smith.' We held her away from field hockey as much as we could."

But Lexi Smith was exposed to the game since the age of 2. She went with her mother to West Jersey Women's League games as a mere toddler, and would soak in various part of her mother's postcollegiate life around the game.

"When my friend Kate and I started the rec program, that was it," Gina Smith said. "I couldn't keep her away from it. I tried lacrosse goalkeeping with her, and she was playing for a while, but we don't have lacrosse here in Florence. She said, 'Why would I dedicating myself to something we don't have at the school?' And I completely understand that. Every day, field hockey is what she does. She loves it."

It even got to the point where Lexi was, like players in the U.S. high-performance system, watching video to get better.

"I have videos that she used to watch when she was little, and she went to bed to them," Gina Smith said. "She watched a lot of the Missy Meharg coaching videos. We laugh about it now, how she went to bed to that."

Evidently, some of Meharg's words sank in. She played out of her age group in indoor play for the Jersey Intensity club team, testing her skills against players who were  three or four years older. She continued playing alongside her future teammates in the township's recreational program, getting familiar with their tendencies.

"We've been playing together since when I was in sixth grade," Lexi Smith says. "And the more you play, the better you get."

Stories and rumors followed about the young phenom, and expectations were pretty high when she became eligible to play at the varsity level.

Consider the expectations fully met.  As the team's center halfback, she is given a certain amount of freedom -- holding midfielder, attacking midfielder, and, perhaps most importantly, as the team's primary corner striker. And lest you think Smith is the entire team, think again -- a number of Florence players can hit the ball just as hard as she can.

"When push comes to shove, I trust any one of my other nine teammates with the ball," Lexi Smith says. "I would have no second thoughts giving it to anybody else. I'd rather see team success than personal success. As long as we're successful, I'm happy."

"She's worked so hard to get where she is," Gina Smith says. "It's the desire, and she has a passion for the game. We've been holding her back the last couple of years, not letting her go to Festival or a showcase, but Kathleen (Stefanelli, the Jersey Intensity director) begged me to let her go."

It's difficult to know whether Smith is going to be able to parlay others' expectations of her into team goals or other achievements. The last 100 years of scholastic field hockey in the United States is rife with stories of players who flamed out in college or never had the success of their peers at the senior level.

But the last 100 years hasn't seen very many 44-goal performances by ninth-graders, either.  Or ninth-graders as grounded as Lexi Smith is.

"I really don't want her to get burned out; that's my fear," Gina Smith says. "Jeff and I are always telling her that academics are first and foremost. And she's a very good student; much better than I ever was. Very conscious of how she does, and what she does, and does it the right way."

"I'm not playing here at Florence to impress anybody," Lexi Smith says. "I'm playing here because I love the girls, and this is where I and my family have grown up. I'm not expecting attention: it's just a bonus that our team can bring attention to the town."

Perhaps she knows success could be just around the bend.