By Phillip
Brents
WSPW Correspondent
If Bonita Vista High School (Chula Vista-Calif.) sophomore
Kelly Nash’s inner will is as relentless as her play on the rink, there
is no doubt that she will achieve her goal.
I’ve really wanted to play in the Olympics since
about a year after I started playing hockey,” said the soft-spoken and
slightly-built 15-year-old from Chula Vista who otherwise has wreaked havoc
on the playing surface (be it roller or ice) since she started playing the
game eight years ago.
Nash, whose name is instantly familiar to anyone who
has competed in the upper echelon of the Tour Pacific Cup and NARCh competitive
playing circuits, is a current selection of the United States girls under-16
national select camp. She broke into the uner-16 selection camp at age
14.
Before that, she made the under-14 selection camp at
age 13.
I think if I keep working at it, there’s a possibility
for 2006 but I am looking more toward 2010 if I keep working hard,”
Nash said of her Olympic aspirations.
Nash will compete with teammates from the under-16 national
select camp during a holiday tournament in Connecticut that will draw many
of the top women’s programs from throughout the nation, including the
Los Angeles-based Cal-Selects.
“I love playing ice. We got to go to Lake Placid.
We trained with Olympic and college coaches. It’s more fun to play against
people who are better,” she said.
Nash began to make headlines almost from the start once
she put on a pair of skates, put on a pair of gloves and picked up a hockey
stick. She became the first female player to win a house league scoring title
at Chula Vista RollerSkateLand. She helped the Hosers take third place at
the NARCh Finals her first year while playing in the Atom Division (under-eight
age group). Two years later, the Hosers placed fifth in the Mite Division.
Last season, she played for the Anaheim Mission Bulldogs, who went as far
as the quarterfinals in the Pee Wee Division at the NARCh Finals.
Neighbors spread kind words of warning when the Nash
family moved back to Chula Vista after a brief stay in LaVerne where the
core of roller hockey talent was closer than two hour freeway trips northward
from San Diego County.
A natural-born athlete, Nash went out for Bonita Vista
tennis during the fall sports season at Bonita Vista. She started out at
the junior varsity level but quickly gained promotion to the varsity squad.
She compiled an undefeated 9-0 varsity record but did not have enough matches
to qualify for the league championship tournament.
Her mother, Elsie, gets right to the point when talking
about what makes her daughter excel on the court. “She’s relentless.
She knows the floor. She’s very strategic in how she goes about the
game. She’s a play-maker. You see that from the stats. She can score
goals but it also includes assists,” Elsie Nash said.
But it is not just the countless goals and assists she
has racked up over the years that has made Nash stand out from the crowd.
It is the refreshing attitude she brings to games. She plays without pressure
despite the goals she has set for herself. Perhaps that is part of the reason
for her success.
“I just like to have fun. I just like to go out
there and have fun, to entertain the crowd,” she said.
In her first three games of varsity high school roller
hockey in the CIF/Metro Conference, she has done both. She had one goal and
six assists in her varsity debut to help lead the Barons’ 18-0 season
opening victory against Castle Park on Nov. 29. She racked up five goals
and one assist in a 19-0 shutout victory against Chula Vista on Dec. 6 to
give her eight goals and 17 points in three games to rank third in league
scoring.
Joe Noris, a former NHL and WHA pro who coached Nash
five years with the Hosers, said he has no doubt that the Barons’
“First Lady of Hockey” will succeed.
“She’s just the greatest. She’s got an
incredible future in terms of getting a college scholarship and making the
Olympic team,” Noris said. “She’s got the three main elements
of a great athlete: quick feet, soft hands and fire in the belly. Her strong
point is her great rink vision. It’s incredible how she can see the
rink.”
Nash has repeatedly proven in just three games that
she can more than keep up - or keep a step ahead - of her physically more
intimidating teammates and opponents. In fact, sometimes her teammates have
trouble keeping up with her speed and deft passing. Watching her on the court
is almost imagining what it would be like to have an NHL player drop down
to play at the minor league level.
But Kelly is only half of the story in the Nash household.
She has to owe the inspiration to her current success to older brother Brent,
a senior, on the Barons team. Brent started playing youth roller hockey at
nine. A year later, Kelly, then 7, wanted to play the same game she enjoyed
watching her brother play.
Both excelled immediately at the game, according to
their mother, Elsie Nash. “A school flyer got them into playing roller
hockey. They took to it immediately. That was it for them. I like to say
that Kelly takes after her brother. They never wanted to play any other
sport,” Elsie Nash said.
Brent, who played as a freshman on the Barons CIF team
before the family moved out of the area, most recently played on the LaVerne
Cobras Midget Division team. As a ninth-grader, he scored the first goal
in Bonita Vista’ still-thrilling-to-recall overtime victory against
Scripps Ranch in the 2002 Kiwanis Cup championship game.
Both Brent and Kelly play on the same line with Bonita
Vista this season, and both have an uncanny feel for one another on the court.
In the Barons’ season-opening win, Brent scored three goals and three
assists. After three games, he had eight goals and 12 assists -- five points
behind little sister to rank fifth in league scoring.
“We’ve been playing eight years. We just know
how each other plays,” Brent Nash said. “I don’t really care
about playing any other sport. I just enjoy playing on the same team with
my sister. We both just have fun out there.”
During the Barons’ victory against Chula Vista,
brother and sister experienced a first - sitting in the penalty box together.
Both parents, Elsie and Kevin, got a laugh out of that episode.
This will be the only time the two Nash siblings will
have the chance to play together on the same high school team as Brent, 18,
will graduate in June while Kelly will have two more years of high school
eligibility ahead of her. Both are thus hoping for a very memorable 2004-05
season together.
“We’re hoping to win the league championship
and maybe go undefeated this year,” both said, nearly in unison. |
