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.