Date: Fri 12-Jan-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Melissa-Eigen-Feature

Full Text:

Melissa Eigen - Feature

B Y K IM J. H ARMON

It burns like a candle flame in the darkness, something intangible but

something so vital that it nearly transcends all the skills and abilities she

has been able to assimilate since she first picked up a basketball or first

kicked a soccer ball.

Desire.

Intensity.

Sheer competitiveness.

Maybe it all started when her father began boxing her out at the refrigerator,

forcing her to develop some moves if she wanted to get something to eat. Or

maybe it started on the basketball courts up the street as she fought the

picks and drove the basket against the neighborhood boys.

Somewhere a fire was lit in the heart of Melissa Eigen, a fire that burns hot

enough to singe . . . hot enough to make her an invaluable member of any team

she plays on.

" It is not so much the physical aspects of her game, " said Pete Fedorov,

former girls' soccer coach at Newtown High School, " but the driving force

behind it. I can't remember one game where she didn't compete. The

competitiveness was always there. "

And it will always be there, long after the spring softball season is over and

Melissa, now 18, becomes one of the few athletes in Newtown High history to

have earned 12 varsity letters.

Beyond The Numbers

One would think that someone who managed to harness the amount of talent and

the amount of desire that Melissa Eigen bottles up inside of her every day

would be spread across the record books at Newtown High School like mustard on

a hot dog, but she took a path, a few years ago, that led her towards the less

glorified positions on the fields of play.

Stopper.

Defensive guard.

Centerfield.

Those are the places where games can be won and games could be lost, but those

are also places - just by the nature of our narrow understanding of sports -

where credit and newspaper headlines often fear to tread . . . except when

it's time for the post-season accolades.

All-WCC soccer.

All-Briggs basketball.

All-Briggs softball.

She has won those things, a little recognition for effort which doesn't get

measured in how many goals she scored, how many points she scored, or how many

home runs she hit.

Melissa has, to date, 466 career points for the Newtown High girls' basketball

team, just 63 points (five or six games) shy of her place on the school's

all-time Top 10 scoring list, but that doesn't in any way define her as a

basketball player. She also has just five career goals in four years on the

soccer field, but that doesn't in any way define her as a soccer player.

Tom Kuroski, one of her co-coaches this winter and a man she has played under

for the past seven years, said, " Melissa's desire to win is as strong as

anyone's I've ever been around. She has never had any fear. She lets it all

hang out and goes out with reckless abandon. "

Coach Fedorov added, " She can be a great example. She has an inner strength

that can transmit to her teammates and lift their level of play. The term

backbone comes to mind. A team needs a central strength and she makes that

tremendous contribution. "

On The Hardwood

Melissa grew up in a basketball family, her father a former player at Western

Maryland and her brother, Mike, a former player at Wethersfield High School.

Basketball was a part of life and she just started playing, shooting hoops up

the street with the neighborhood kids. The family moved to Newtown when

Melissa was in the fourth grade and that's when she started in the Newtown

Parks and Recreation Youth Basketball League, meeting up for the first time

with Katie Lyddy, a court partner for seven of the next eight years.

As a sixth grader, Melissa tried out for, and made, the Newtown Middle School

girls' basketball team under coaches Gregg Simon and Tom Kuroski. It was a

great team, with eighth graders Sarah Wasko and Micaela Hurley, seventh grader

Katie Lyddy, and sixth grader Erica Hanson.

How great? Forget, for a moment, the 39-5 record the Lady Lions boasted in

Melissa's three years there. Those four girls, with Melissa, will finish their

careers on Newtown High School's all-time Top 10 scoring list.

In middle school, Melissa, besides being fast, had the benefit of being bigger

and stronger than many of the kids she played against, giving her the ability

to run the floor and play post-up.

" The girls who were tall then, " like Michelle Florin and Samantha Halpern,

she said, " were skinny, so I could play with the girls who were six foot

because I could use my strength. It was easy for me in middle school because I

was fast, and I was this height, so I was able to do a lot more. I could go

down low and handle the ball, too. "

Coach Gregg Simon remembered, " She was a real good shooter from 10 or 12 feet

in, but her game was to take the ball from you and take it down to the other

end of the court, and there wasn't anything you were going to do about it. "

That relentless style of her game, though, didn't quite stick in the minds of

her teammates as well, back then, as did her propensity of hitting the floor

with a good deal of ferocity. It earned her the nickname Crash  . . . a

moniker that, although no less deserving considering her never-ending and

relentless pursuit of the ball and the number of times she has been hurt, only

started fading away when she entered her freshman year at Newtown High.

And while that reputation started to fade, she began to construct another,

more formidable reputation. Sarah Wasko had set the NHS record for points as a

freshman, with 149, just two years before, but Melissa, who didn't expect to

get much time on the varsity floor, finished with 124.

" I thought I'd be on the jayvee and maybe sit on the varsity bench, " Melissa

admitted. " I didn't expect at all to start and it was a total surprise that I

did as well as I did. "

But co-coach Gregg Simon said the team needed her.

" When Melissa was a freshman we didn't have much speed, " he said. " There

were no burners on the team. But when we put Melissa on the court, with her

speed, good things began to happen. "

And a lot of good things were expected to happen the following year, but

Melissa, er, Crash ed to the floor in a pre-season game with Ridgefield and

dislocated her shoulder, setting her back for a couple of weeks, which ended

up limiting her to 108 points for the year.

As a junior, with the loss of Wasko and Hurley, the Lady Indians needed her

more than ever.

And she was there with 181 points and a team-high 90 steals - the most on the

books since Diane Batt's apparent school-record 100 steals five years before -

and helped lead the Lady Indians to a 15-7 record.

Melissa has seen her game transform itself - from the low post out to the

perimeter - as her opponents grew and she did not. The people she used to be

bigger and taller and faster than in seventh and eighth grades have now caught

up. But only in size.

Crash had matured. Crash had grown up.

Crash had become a better player.

" I'm more under control, now, " she said. " I still foul out, but I used to,

like, kill people. When I go out there, my strengths, I think, are my defense

and my aggressiveness. Instead of trying to work on being the high scorer

every game - I'll get my eight or 10 points every game and I'm totally

satisfied with that - I'm basically there to guard one of the better players

on the team and try to keep them from scoring. "

Her skills have earned the attentions of a lot of collegiate coaches, from

schools like Assumption, a Division II team looking for a guard with Melissa's

capabilities. " She has squeezed every bit of fun from her high school sports,

" said coach Simon, " and I think that's wonderful. But when Melissa makes a

commitment to one sport (in college), she will take off very quickly. "

And when she does, Melissa will remember her two coaches, two of the people

who made it possible.

" They mean so much more to me than just being coaches, " she said. " I will

remember them, to the day I die, because they have helped me with everything.

I had them as teachers and they would always be there to keep me on track and

even now, when I have an enormous amount of homework, the things they have

done then help me now. "

On The Soccer Field

Oh, but for a pair of ballet shoes a great soccer career might not ever have

happened. That's what Melissa wanted to do when she was a young 'un, but Dad

was thinking more along the lines of gymnastics . . . stuff like that. What he

ended up signing Melissa on for was soccer.

" I was so scared, " Melissa remembered, " but I got out there, just a Parks

and Rec thing, and I loved it. You could just run around. It was great. So I

stayed with it. "

And she got a chance to score. Early on she played up front and had her time

attacking the net, scoring the goals, but on a spring team, before she was in

high school, her coach needed a stopper on a team that was stacked on offense.

She had a great day.

The rest, as they say . . .

" When I got put back on offense, " she admitted, " I didn't know what I was

doing, because I had become so defensive minded. You have to be on a mind

track because it's so different. "

But like basketball, a stopper on defense is lost amid the efforts of her

offensive teammates. And if the opposing high-scoring forward doesn't score a

goal or dish out an assist, it is because she had a bad game and rarely

because the girls marking her, namely Melissa, had a great game.

And like basketball, Melissa has been able to put that in perspective.

" My job is to take the ball away from someone, " she said. " The best thing

is if the player I'm marking doesn't score, doesn't get anything. It can be so

frustrating. It's great. When I was younger, I was the scorer. I had all of

that. Now I don't, but it doesn't matter, because I'm satisfied with what I'm

doing. "

Melissa began to make an impact with the girls' soccer team almost right away,

despite being as strong as it was, and coach Fedorov believes that everything

to do with her confidence.

" She had the kind of confidence that a really good athlete has to have, " he

said. " When you come into a situation where the team is strong, you have to

have confidence that you can come in there and play. "

Coach Fedorov had a player who can stop, but what he had to mold Melissa into

was a player more in control of herself, more in control of her emotions and

her abilities.

" I always knew where she was coming from, " said coach Fedorov. " I realized

that she cared so much about the game. "

Like two peas in a pod, coach and player seemed made for each other. Like

Melissa, coach Fedorov had a fiery disposition and a ferocious competitive

nature nearly unrivalled among his peers.

" He raised me as a soccer player, " said Melissa, " and taught me so much

about myself when I play, like controlling my temper. He was the one who got

through to me. People who know soccer know he is an excellent coach. "

Softball

When the winter snow fades away and the winds no longer carry the hint of a

impending nor'easter, when the decision will have been made as to where she

will be attending school in the fall, Melissa will be back out on the field.

After 18 games on the soccer field and another 24 on the basketball floor and

being just three months shy of her graduation, Melissa would have earned a

break, a rest.

But she can't rest.

She has to play.

If it wasn't for softball, it would be lacrosse, and if it wasn't lacrosse, it

would be track. But in softball she found another sport she loves and a coach

she respects.

" I sort of play it to play it, " admitted Melissa, who also plays spring

soccer. " I take it seriously, but I just don't concentrate as much on it as I

do the other two sports. "

But she likes playing softball because she likes playing for coach Zito, a man

whose personality - relaxed, controlled - is an almost perfect contrast to

that of her other three coaches.

" He always gets the best out of his players, " said Melissa. " He always gets

110% from you. He knows your strengths and he gets that out of you all the

time. Just being the athletic director he's helped me so much with sports,

getting things done, and he's been a good person to go to and talk about

problems. "

And he will be the person who will, in June, bestow upon Melissa Eigen her

12th NHS varsity letter, a rare feat enjoyed by few, exceeded by none, and

probably not at all possible if it hadn't been for that flame, that fire

burning inside of her.