Meredith Spolarich can do it all when it comes to sports — and when it comes to her studies as well. The first time she ever high-jumped, she cleared 4 feet 8 inches; as an eighth grader on the Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School softball team, she hit a grand slam home run, her mother recalls, and had not winter and spring track beckoned in her sophomore year, she probably would have been the girls basketball team’s center in the season just past and would be getting ready now to play softball in the spring.
Field hockey, a sport that requires a lot of grit as well as skill and forges strong ties among teammates, is her favorite. When asked if there were any sports she might like to play that she hadn’t yet tried, the interviewee said, “Tennis . . . and lacrosse.”
Though, at the moment, what with International Baccalaureate schoolwork in history, math, physics, English, Spanish, and the theory of knowledge, and winter track practices and competitions — Spolarich was to have high-jumped and run in the 4-by-400 relay for the East Hampton-Pierson-Bridgehampton girls team at the county’s state qualifier meet Monday — she doesn’t have much time for anything else.
Recently, the school record-setting 4-by-400 relay team of Spolarich, Leslie Samuel, Melina Sarlo, and Ryleigh O’Donnell won that event in the county small schools meet.
Her 4-8 high jump was by no means her best, which is 5-1. Thus, she was working earlier this week with one of her coaches, Eric Malecki, to adjust her approach to the bar. “There are a lot of little things that go into it,” she said. “One little change can make all the difference . . . for good or bad.” With a smile, she said, “You can say I’ll be shooting for the stars [at the state qualifier], for as high as I can get.”
She’s also competed in the shot-put and long jump, by the way.
Mention of field hockey in her case inevitably brings to mind the devastating no-goal call in Pierson’s Long Island Class C field hockey championship game with Carle Place this fall. Shooting from the top of the circle on a penalty corner play awarded the Whalers with less than a minute to go in regulation, Spolarich, receiving the ball from Mia Gangemi, launched a shot along the turf that should have tied the score at 2-2, but a referee, standing on the endline, waved it off, saying she had shot from outside the circle. A photo that The Star ran with a story on the stunning 2-1 loss that week made it clear that the ref was wrong.
“Did you all cry?”
“Yes,” the center midfielder said, with a wan smile, “we did. We were pretty disappointed. We still are. We had had such a good season and such a good group. I’ve played with Mia since the seventh grade.”
When this writer said he still didn’t know, after years of covering field hockey, what alleged errors caused the refs to blow all those whistles, Spolarich, who has also during her school years played for Kim Hannigan’s well-traveled East End Field Hockey travel team, acknowledged that she was puzzled at times herself.
While she didn’t want to talk about the controversial call immediately after the Long Island championship game, Spolarich, one of the Whalers’ captains, did tell a reporter that Pierson field hockey had given her her fondest memories and best friends.
Asked which colleges she might want to go to, Spolarich, who has applied to 15, and whose professional interests are so varied that she finds it hard to alight upon one, said she’d like it to be a big research school, “with a great field hockey team.”
“The only issue is that at a bigger school there’s more competition for spots on the team. But there’s also club field hockey. . . . I don’t know what my future is in field hockey. . . . The Olympics? I haven’t even thought about the Olympics. But I’ll always be involved in athletics.”
As for the future, she’s concluded that “it doesn’t matter what I do as long as I’m always working at it and helping other people.”
“It sounds as if you’ve got it,” her interviewer said in parting.
