Whiz Kid: Field Hockey Player Emma Bozek

Name: Emma Bozek

Age: 17

School: Lakeland High School

Accomplishment: The First Team All American and Futures Elite is a member of the USA U-17 National Field Hockey Team and has been training as an Olympic Development Select.

Key to Awesomeness: 

For the second consecutive year, Emma Bozek was selected to train at Junior National Camp for field hockey, an opportunity offered to just three high school girls in New York State this year. JNC is ongoing this week (July 12- 15).

An athlete of this caliber has a busy schedule. At the end of her junior year at Lakeland High School, Bozek headed for the Junior Women’s National Field Hockey Championship in Virginia Beach. Next stop was University of North Carolina for Carolina Field Hockey Camp.

Bozek spent the past weekend at the University of Albany 6-A-Side Tournament with the Hudson Valley team. Then back to Virginia for JNC held at Old Dominion University. With the Hudson Valley squad, Bozek will later travel to Richmond, Virginia for the first annual National Club Championship.

“Basically, Junior National Camp is a pipeline for the junior National Team,” Bozek said.

After the 2010 JNC, Bozek was picked to join the USA Under-17 Women’s National Field Hockey Team that competed in the DOMO International Easter Hockey Tournament in the Netherlands in April.

With a profile that includes strong academic records, the honor student was recruited by numerous colleges - Princeton University, Columbia University, and University of Michigan, among others. In December, Bozek verbally committed to attend the University of North Carolina and play field hockey with the Tar Heels. (UNC women’s field hockey team is the 2010 NCAA Division 1 runner-up as well as 2007 and 2009 champion.)

“I loved the campus, the girls on the team, and the coach,” Bozek said about UNC. “Everyone [on the team] was one big family, having a good time. And that’s what I looked for in my college sport.”

Sharon Sarsen, head coach of LHS field hockey team, said Bozek is one of the "most decorated" players to play Lakeland field hockey, and that she already has 100 points on 79 goals and 21 assists.

“Emma is a wonderful leader due to her exceptional work ethic on and off the field,” Sarsen said. 

Sarsen has led the team to New York State Class B Field Hockey Championship five times, including 2009 and 2010, when Bozek scored in the final games. Sarsen also coaches the Hudson Valley team.

Described by Sarsen as a “a true competitor who steps up in the biggest games,” Bozek won a gold medal at the Empire State Summer Games and is a Big Apple Memorial Six-A-Side Tournament Champion. Her page-long field hockey accomplishments also include National Indoor Tournament, National Hockey Festival, Junior Olympics (selected to the All Tournament Team), and Cortesi Classic Tournament Champion and Tournament MVP.

It all started when Bozek first reluctantly picked up a field hockey stick as a sixth grader, but her spark for the sport was lit at a field hockey camp.

“Ever since that one week when I loved to play [field hockey], I play it any chance I can get and compete on the field,” Bozek said.

That pivotal camp was run by Sarsen, and Bozek attended it with her sister Megan (now a sophomore at University of New Hampshire). The sisters who used to hit around hockey balls on Putnam Valley turf were teammates on the New England's High Performance Team that that competed at the Junior Women’s National Field Hockey Championship in June.

“[Sarsen] has inspired Emma to play her best, be her best, and give back to the sport what the sport has given to her,” Emma's mother, Donna Bozek said. “Megan and Emma are very close and they did train together, encouraging one another. Most of all, Megan and Emma are wonderful caring people.”

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Nominations for Yorktown Patch’s Whiz Kids can be submitted to Plamena Pesheva plamena@patch.com and Christine An christinean.patch@gmail.com