WOODBURY — Braid your hair, put on your left shoe first, wear the same socks.
Most athletes have their own pregame ritual. Nonnewaug junior soccer player Ella Quinn is no different – hers includes positivity and a shot of energy.
“I usually have Peach Red Bull before every single game, at least I try to, and I mostly just take my time getting ready,” Quinn said. “I go through the same stretches before every single game and I just stay super quiet and just think about everything that I’m going to do in the game. I think about my favorite things that I’ve done in the past while playing soccer and I envision myself doing that in a game.”
Despite all the physical preparation Quinn does, her success mainly comes from her mentality.
“I think my mentality is mostly just really focused on discipline, and for me, nothing is ever good enough,” Quinn said, “I always have to make sure that every single thing that I’m doing while I’m playing soccer just meets my own standards and the standards of other people.”
Quinn isn’t the only one that thinks she’s in her head — senior teammate Ellie McDonald says that sometimes Quinn is too hard on herself.
“Sometimes I see her and she goes hard on herself, but I think every athlete does that but just because she knows how well she can perform,” McDonald said. “She wants to be at her best all the time for the team which I think is great and a great mindset to have.”
McDonald and Quinn’s friendship started at a young age.
“This starts with T-ball,” McDonald said. “We were the only two girls on the whole entire team, and Ella barely ever went to practice, but that was when I was in first grade and Ella was in kindergarten. We played basketball in middle school until she quit, and then she came up to the high school and we started doing soccer and track together. So Ella and I did a lot of the same sports just growing up in general.”
Fellow teammate Olivia Gwiazdoski met Quinn in second grade. She might as well have met Alex Morgan.
“When I saw Ella at first, I was scared of her and I thought she was so cool,” Gwiazdoski said, “and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to be Ella.’”
Quinn’s teammates aren’t the only ones that had a good first impression of her. Nonnewaug boys soccer coach Toby Denman taught Quinn’s freshman biology class.
“I would run my practices and not really see what the girls were doing very often,” Denman said. “I already had a positive impression of her as a student from having her in class, but as a freshman she was pretty quiet. Then I feel like I saw her in a scrimmage for the first time … and I was like, whoa, this girl is really good. I think she was playing center-mid at the time and there had been a multiple-year starter at center-mid and I was like, this girl as a freshman fits right in. Then probably the most I got her to talk in class was probably the next day after saying something like, ‘Hey, nice job yesterday. You’re pretty good.’”
Former Nonnewaug girls soccer coach Nick Sheikh had a similar judgement of Quinn as a rookie.
“As a freshman Ella put herself on the map by taking ownership of her responsibilities,” Sheikh said. “She kind of knew what she had to do and attempted to put in the work and then some towards that, and I feel like even in some regards maybe she put too much pressure expectations on herself but the fact that he wanted to do that was a huge indicator of how she’d impact others around her.”
The pressure made it difficult for Quinn, in the quarterfinal game against New Fairfield when the game-winning penalty kick came down to her right leg.
“I was really trying to drown out everything and only focus on just making that one goal,” Quinn said. “It was really relieving to make it so that I could score that for our team and let us advance farther in states.”
While one might let the excitement get to them, Quinn’s humble personality shined through with class. Never one to take personal credit or be the loudest one on the field, Quinn prefers to be soft-spoken in most situations.
“I guess I just don’t really have that much to say to be honest,” Quinn said. “When I’m in a social setting, I’m very much an observer, and I think it just takes a lot for me to warm up to people. With my close friends, obviously I’m pretty loud I’m sure they would say, but new people I’m usually a little quieter around.”
Which makes her an ideal candidate for one career she’s considering.
“My dream job would be in international relations and I could be like a foreign CIA officer and I could be an intel person,” Quinn said. “I think that would be cool.”
