By Chris Rotolo
RUMSON – Those on the outside looking in have accused borough native Grace Anne McCooey of being unequivocally loony, but she has been proving them wrong for a while.
McCooey, a 2022 graduate of Rumson-Fair Haven High School, is known nationally as a field hockey standout.
On the scholastic circuit, McCooey was a four-year varsity letter winner, lifting the Bulldogs to three NJSIAA sectional state championships. The forward carved out her piece of the national field hockey landscape as a member of the elite Pennsylvania travel organization the WC Eagles.
It’s with the Spring City, Pennsylvania outfit that McCooey captured the U-19 National Club Championship in Virginia Beach earlier this month, before returning to the Garden State and heading south on Route 1 to join her teammates at Princeton University, where she will compete for the next four years at the NCAA Division I level.
The résumé is impressive for any competitor, let alone one who only found the sport in eighth grade, after maneuvering away from an alpine ski racing path that appeared headed for the Winter Olympics.
“People were shocked. No one understood what I was doing, or why I was doing it,” McCooey said.
During an Aug. 15 interview with The Two River Times, she discussed her life as a young student-athlete living, learning and training at Stratton Mountain School in Vermont. McCooey was accepted into the institution’s revered Alpine Program, which boasts 45 years of developing ski athletes between the U-14 and U-21 levels, and 14 alumni who have appeared in the Olympics.
“I was living away from home; training away from home. I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. But I wanted to come home,” said McCooey, who earned two medals as a member of the U-14 National Alpine Ski Team. “No one understood what I was doing, but they also didn’t know how hard I wanted to work this next challenge. I’m still making people understand.”
Her mission took root in the fall of 2018, when McCooey was the lone member of a talented incoming freshman class to land a regular role on the Bulldogs varsity squad. The season culminated in her first of three sectional titles with a 1-0 victory over Bernards in the final.
McCooey led the Bulldogs in goal scoring during her sophomore season, notching 27 tallies en route to the club’s second consecutive sectional crown. A junior campaign abbreviated by COVID-19 resulted in more of the same for Rumson, which garnered a third straight championship.
“Rumson was my first taste of competitive field hockey with an older group of girls. Initially that experience was kind of overwhelming, but it taught me a lot about my ability and how to play with and bond with teammates. Four years there taught me how to be confident and be a leader,” said McCooey, who finished her Bulldogs career with 129 total points.
If high school taught her how to lead, McCooey’s time with the WC Eagles offered a lesson that transcends athletics: How to adapt, survive and excel in uncomfortable surroundings.
In a word, McCooey described her experience with the Eagles as “stressful,” describing an organizational environment that emphasized competition as a means to generating optimal results for the athletes.
“Up to the last week before our trip to Nationals this month, there were 30 of us on the training squad and they were only taking 20 of us to the tournament,” McCooey said. “We were trying out right up to the very end. You could never feel like you were safe there. You can thrive under that pressure and use it to help push you to be a better person and a better player, or it can break you.”
McCooey credits her coaches and that mental toughness they instilled for helping her feel prepared to enter the next phase of field hockey at Princeton.
“Every player on my team is playing NCAA Division I, and we owe a lot of that to our training. It not only teaches you how to compete at the next level, but how not to allow yourself to be complacent,” McCooey said. “Because I went through it, I know how to approach every workout, every practice, with a competitive mindset and the desire to get better. I don’t need anyone else to motivate me. Motivation is ingrained in me. It’s my new normal.”
The Tigers will open their regular season schedule Sept. 2 at the University of North Carolina before returning home for a Sept. 9 matchup with Syracuse University and a Sept. 11 road meeting with Rutgers University.
The article originally appeared in the August 18 – 24, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
