Emily Arciero: Always Try Your Best and Stick with It

After tennis games, Spaniard Rafael Nadal often says, “I tried my best,” which is one of the reasons he is rising senior Emily Arciero’s favorite athlete.

She almost played tennis in high school, but she ended up playing lacrosse in the spring instead because she wanted to play a team sport, as opposed to an individual one, and her primary athletic focus is field hockey.

She “tried everything” growing up, her mother, Susan said, from competing in ballet, tap and jazz through sixth grade to playing viola in fourth grade. One of her favorite songs to play is Led Zepplin's "Kashmir" and she likes anything by The Beatles. Playing lacrosse with her cousins Nick and Noah in Saratoga when she was younger inspired her to play lacrosse. Emily never set out to be a star in anything she did.

“It was all for fun,” said Emily Arciero, who like many people in Avon started off playing soccer, trying out different sports.

Fun is certainly a part of Avon Falcons field hockey. The team puts on "pump-up" music before games and does spirit days, dressing up as rock stars, hippis, superheroes and many other themes in school. The team bonding helps her look forward to playing and reduces her nerves, she said.

Arciero started playing field hockey in seventh grade, and she sticks with it, no pun intended.

"Always give all you've got because if you have any regrets, you can't play to your full potential," Arciero said. "That's kind of my attitude toward a lot of things."

A leader on and off the field, Arciero is co-president of the Avon Club, which does volunteer work with Avon Dollars for Scholars, local food shelters, and Gifts of Love, and collects donations for American soldiers around Christmas time. The club members also give tours of the high school to rising freshman and help out with orientation for the new students.

At the high school level, she said her coach, Terri Ziemnicki, pushes her hard and that as a result, she said, "I'm in the best shape of my life." Arciero follows her coach's "heart and hussle" mantra.

One of the major fitness components of pre-season, which starts Saturday, is the timed two-mile run. Arciero had never run that far her freshman year and clocked 17 minutes. Now, she is down to 12 minutes, essentially a 6-minute mile pace. The team also does a lot of sprints to get in shape.

Field hockey is meant to be played on turf, Arciero said, so "getting used to grass" again for high school practice and games is an adjustment.

The team to beat this year in the North Central Connecticut Conference is Granby, Arciero said, and on the lacrosse side, Farmington's team is growing strong. There is no bigger rival in her mind, however, than New Canaan. Arciero scored the only and winning goal against New Canaan last fall in the quarterfinals of the Class M state tournament on a penalty stroke. New Canaan knocked Avon out in the semifinals the previous year.

"It felt really awesome getting revenge on the team that beat us last year," Arciero said. "It was good to win for a coach with such passion."

Avon lost in the semifinals again in 2010, but Arciero is confident her team can make it to the finals.

Only a couple of starting seniors graduated in June, so the Falcons maintain a strong team. Arciero said that she and many of her teammates played on a club team called HTC, or Hear the Cheers. Playing together at Tolland in the winter and at Trinity College in the summer, being coached by former national field hockey players, will give the Falcons the advantage of consistency.

She played in many camps and has also done the USA Field Hockey Futures program field in the off-seasons.Her sophomore year, she played on an under-16 regional team of girls from Connecticut and Rhode Island that advanced to the national Futures tournament in Virginia Beach. The girls played teams from all over the country, and Arciero noted that "Pennsylvania is the hotbed for field hockey."

"It was really good," she said of her experience on Futures. "It was the first time I played at a higher level on track to college. "I saw that high level made me strive and I always love a challenge."

That was when she "really decided field hockey was the sport for me."

Speaking of college, Arciero has already verbally committed to play field hockey at Brown University in Providence, RI, though she still has to submit her application for the Early Decision round, and the Ivy League will also review her SAT I and II scores and grades. Arciero, who is in the National Honor Society, said she is not entirely sure what she wants to major in at Brown, should all work out, but she said that science is her favorite subject. Last year, she also looked at Boston University, Fairfield University, Qunnipiac University, Bucknell University, the College of Holy Cross, Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania.

She chose Brown because when she went up for Junior Day last year, she had the opportunity to play with the field hockey team and got the best vibe, liking the players and the coach, who was a national field hockey player.

"I could see myself on the team," she said.

Providence is a "nice city," she said, and Brown is close to the downtown. Brown was the size she wanted, strong academically and she strives to play Division I field hockey. 

Arciero said she is ready to experience city life outside of Avon, where she has been since kindergarten, living in Farmington briefly before.

"I'm definitely looking forward to field hockey and meeting new people," Arciero said.

Her talent at the sport surprised her and her parents, considering she did not know a thing about the sport before she started.

“I never realized this (field hockey) was going to work out,” Arciero said.

However, Arciero will not tell you right away that she made All State Second Team her sophomore year and All State First Team her junior year, in addition to being All-Conference those years and an honorable mention on The Hartford Courant team her freshman and sophomore year.  She has also been an All Conference athlete in lacrosse.

She is proud, but she is more focused on her love of the game, and as Nadal says, trying her best. Field hockey “translates into real life,” she said, teaching her a strong work ethic.

“You can always get better because there are different elements to it,” Arciero said, calling it a control game. “There’s always something new I can work on.”

In the fall, she focuses on her footwork, and in the off-season he works on improving her stick skills from shooting to positioning and balance.

She said she loves playing at the high school and she likes her team.

When she first started playing, the most challenging part was learning that she could only hit the field hockey ball with one side of the stick. Coming from the soccer world, where you predominantly use your feet, field hockey’s regulations against kicking the ball was different. In high school, she started off as a right-winger her first two years because of her speed down the flank of the field, and being moved to center midfielder when she honed ball-handling skills, which is important as a midfielder because her role is to distribute the ball and pass to the forwards.

Arciero said she is excited to meet her new teammates and the freshmen on the first day of pre-season Saturday. The team has a kick-off pool party planned at one of her teammate’s houses after tryouts. Sunday’s practice has already been canceled because of Hurricane Irene.

As advice to anyone who is new to field hockey, Arciero said, "Stick with it. It will get better and is definitely worth staying."

Editor's Note: Do you have a suggestion for someone to feature for Patchlete of the Week? Any Avon resident from a child to an adult who plays, coaches or is somehow involved in the sports world qualifies. Email recommendations to Jessie.Sawyer@patch.com. The feature runs on Saturdays.