PENDELTON — The grind truly never stops for Starpoint’s Grace Crissman.
The junior does not play any other sports except for soccer and it has translated to one of the best seasons in school history. Crissman finished her fourth season with a Section VI-best and school-record 43 goals and 111 points, giving her a career total of 87 goals, 55 assists and 229 points.
Her success has not come without hard work and dedication to her craft though. Once this year’s Spartans season ended it was right on to playing for the Rochester New York Football Club without only one day off in between. Even when the Duquesne University commit gets off the field after a game she’s immediately logging onto Hudl.
And for that, Crissman has been named Greater Niagara Newspapers Girls Soccer Player of the Year.
“After every game I’m very hard on myself so I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna go through everything I did wrong and try and fix it for the next time I play,” Crissman said. “… Sometimes before we would play a team I would go look up their Hudl and then I would go watch the game that they played so I can look at the players that stood out from there. So I know what to watch for from there.”
One of the biggest areas that she has grown in is the mental side of the game where she has learned to quickly move past mistakes on the field and go run and try to get the ball back or make a play. She added that when she was first on the varsity team in eighth grade she would get frustrated when she made a mistake but she has grown and improved to now immediately check back in mentally and continue playing.
Playing with a clear head allowed Crissman to help her teammates on and off the field. During her junior campaign, Crissman was one of her team’s four captains.
“She was a huge asset,” Starpoint head coach Kristen Casero said. “She covered the middle of the field but at the same time it wasn’t even just her play on the field. She was a true leader to the girls, always pushing them to do their personal best on top of what she set out to do.”
Throughout her junior season, Crissman did a good job of using her speed and strength to get past defenders and create space which gave her the opening to get in and score.
Crissman helped the Spartans have the best season in program history, going 19-1 overall. They also won the Section VI Class A title and made it to the Far West Regional for the first time in team history.
On Sept. 13, Starpoint trailed 2-0 and then 3-2 against Williamsville East and appeared to be heading to their first loss of the season. That is, until, Crissman took over and scored three of the game’s next four goals including the overtime-winner to give her team a 5-4 comeback win.
“So that was definitely a game-changer for me and from that point I was like, ‘all right we can make something out of this year because I mean they just work their butts off,” Crissman said. “… That win was just all heart right there.”
During their run in the playoffs, Crissman scored five goals and added two assists, as part of the team’s 17 goals in their four games. Despite coming up short in the Far West Regional this year, Crissman is one of 10 players returning from this year’s roster, making up 83 of the team’s 90 goals.
While she still does have one year left, Crissman has announced her commitment to play for Division I Duquesne. As of Nov. 25, she is one of six commits to the Dukes according to Sportsrecruits.com.
During one of her visits to the school in Pittsburgh, she did find a little slice of home that will help her during her four years.
“It was a fun experience,” Crissman said. “We went down and … we’re huge Bills fans and there was a Bills restaurant in Pittsburgh. So we were like this is perfect, I feel right at home.”