By Gary Brown

Listing all of Katie O’Donnell’s field hockey accomplishments would take the entire ASA Newsletter, but what the stats don’t show is that once Maryland’s stick-wielding standout walks off the field, she’s done with the game.

“I hate talking about field hockey off the field,” said the junior who’s already a two-time Division I all-American and Atlantic Coast Conference Offensive Player of the Year. “It’s such a huge part of my life that I don’t want it to overtake every part of my life.

“My mom doesn’t like that very much. She wants to know how practice was and what we did, and I’m like, ‘Mom… I’m done talking about it.’ ”

It’s hard to blame the Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, native for wanting to keep her athletics accomplishments in the background. Her opponents might wish they’d go away altogether. O’Donnell led the nation in points per game as a freshman and was second last year during the Terps’ national-title run.

Maryland coach Missy Meharg calls O’Donnell the playmaker on the team, and rightfully so. As a prolific goal scorer, O’Donnell has even more assists (43 her first two years). She’s at it again this year, with two helpers in the Terps’ opening-game win and 13 through mid-September.

“Success in field hockey is not just about being able to control the ball with a stick but also knowing when and where to cut and knowing the best position to be in to help your teammate,” O’Donnell said.

Though she comes from a sports family (she’s the youngest of four; her brother played lacrosse at St. Joseph’s and her twin sisters were field hockey players at Drexel) and was given a field hockey stick at age 3, O’Donnell didn’t take up the game seriously until seventh grade. She was more into soccer at the time (which she says contributed skills that transfer nicely to field hockey) until a scheduling conflict emerged.

Because field hockey and soccer were in the same seasons in junior high, O’Donnell’s mother urged her to play field hockey in school and soccer on her travel squad, since there were fewer opportunities to play field hockey outside the school structure. “So I

listened to her,” said O’Donnell (which she usually does, she said, because the two are very close), “and I wound up going to field hockey and things just took off from there.”

They took off so much that O’Donnell at age 16 became the youngest player to ever make the U.S. national team.

That led to a series of international experiences. O’Donnell remembers the first perhaps the most.

“We went to New Zealand in 2005. I was just 16, and being on the national team was such a huge deal for me,” she recalled. “There were nine of us who were playing in our first game with that team. We ran onto the field and were like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ But then we lost, 5-0. It was rough, but then you realize that the level of competition is so much better out there than we are familiar with inside the States. We ended up improving so much from that game to our last one, which we won.”

O’Donnell hasn’t stopped improving on the field or off. Her ambitions are to finish her degree in elementary education, make the 2012 Olympic team and perhaps spend a year or two playing in the Netherlands with good friend and teammate Ameliet Rischen before coming back to the States to pursue a teaching career.

O’Donnell said she has an affinity for kids and is always looking to help people (thus her proficiency in assisting on the field), so teaching is a perfect fit.

She figures to be as humble of a leader in the classroom as she is on the field.

“When I’m at a field hockey event, I walk around like nobody knows me,” she said, even though she’s among the game’s most accomplished players. “I also rely on teammates who keep each other from thinking that any one of us is better than anyone else. I’m no one special at Maryland, and the girls would never let me think that even if I wanted to. I love that about my team and the other people I am close to around here.”

And when the game’s over … well, don’t ask O’Donnell to talk much about it.

© 2010 NCAA