And now four years later, de Leon has won the “Goalie of the Year” award from the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League and was placed on the all-CCS team.
Like most other field hockey players, she only began the sport when she was a freshman in high school. Her friend senior Allegra Ziegler-Hunts’s sister was playing field hockey at MVHS, and de Leon decided to give the sport a try with Ziegler-Hunts at a one-week summer camp.
When she reached MVHS tryouts and was placed as a goalie, de Leon was somewhat relieved.
“I have fairly minor scoliosis, and field hockey is bent over a lot from the back,” de Leon said. “Being a goalie was better, where it was upright and a lot more agile in terms of the bending.”
And after eight years of rhythmic gymnastics, de Leon was not comfortable with team field hockey dynamic. Being a goalie was about quick reflexes, stopping balls and angles, which she was already used to. But as a freshman, the JV field hockey team spent a majority of their season on offense, and de Leon didn’t get the chance to hone her goalie skills.\
Her chance to elevate her play arrived with the Futures program. As USA Field Hockey’s Olympic Development program, Futures holds circuits for field players and goalies. After the players submit their times for the circuits, they are notified whether or not they qualify for the program.
“I did [the circuit] and going into the day I had no intention of going into this Futures program,” de Leon said. “At that point I wasn’t too invested in the sport.”
When de Leon completed the circuit, the coaches told her that her times were some of the best they had ever seen for a freshman goalie. With their encouragement, she submitted her times and was accepted into the program. Her enrollment in the program spurred a tremendous growth in de Leon’s knowledge of the game. It was also then that she decided to buy her own goalie gear. Arriving at the Futures tryouts with a too-small chest protector from MVHS, the Futures coach said, ‘This isn’t going to work out.” de Leon’s father went online, and that was the start of her getting her own gear.
“[That] chest protector and these arms were mine,” de Leon said. “That was the start of ‘Ok this is something I’m doing.’”
Back on the school team, de Leon’s found her own leadership position even without being a captain. Armed with her knowledge from Futures, she realized that her two school coaches Denise Eachus and Bonnie Belshe didn’t have the time to individually train the goalies, as they made up the small minority of the team.
“I was in charge,” de Leon said. “I could do what I wanted to work on, what I saw and what I felt to help me improve and to help the others improve.”
In the last three seasons, de Leon has kicked, moved and blocked with a team that has qualified for CCS twice and has continued with the Futures program. After the coaches of the league gathered, it was decided that de Leon would join the all-CCS team with teammates seniors Halley Wright and Julia Lu.
Even as Goalie of the Year and a member of the all-CCS team, de Leon does not know whether or not she wants to commit to college field hockey. But she wants to stay active, and unlike rhythmic gymnastics, she knows field hockey will never fall out of her life.
