Channeling Her Older Sister, Balleza Shines for the Crimson

The first time Harvard field hockey coach Tjerk van Herwaarden saw junior Marissa Balleza play, he was still an assistant coach at the University of Maryland and she was still just a freshman at Severna Park High School—a half hour away from College Park.

From the moment she took the field, however, Herwaarden knew that he was watching a big-time talent.

Three years later, Herwaarden’s and Balleza’s paths crossed again as he found himself putting together his first recruiting class as head coach at Harvard. Remembering Balleza from his days in Maryland, Heerwaarden decided that he had to try to have her join him in Cambridge.

After a long tug-of-war with Cornell for Balleza’s signature, Heerwaarden got his wish, and along with it, a front row seat to see how the high school freshman he had identified so many years earlier would pan out at the college level.

The verdict came just a few months into Balleza’s freshman year, in a mid-week matchup late in October against crosstown rivals Northeastern. Balleza had started all season, making solid contributions to the team as a rotation player. With 4 minutes left and the score still tied 0-0, however, overtime seemed inevitable, and certainly no one was counting on a freshman to break the deadlock.

“The game was going back and forth, back and forth,” Herwaarden said. “No one could get any real chances and players were becoming frustrated.”

But Balleza, in a sequence that would be repeated many more times in her college career, managed to conjure up a goal from practically nothing. With a low, hard shot from the left side of the shooting circle, she buried the decisive point of the match.

From moment Balleza spun away in celebration that day, Herwaarden knew he was no longer watching a star in the waiting. He was watching a star.

“What makes Marissa so special is at she’s not the kind of player who scores the goals when the game’s already 4-0 or 6-0,” Herwaarden said. “She’s the kind of player who scores when you’re down, or when you’re tied, and no one else can seem to score.”

Balleza followed up her performance against the Huskies with three more goals in her last three games of the season and an assist of the game-winning goal in the Crimson’s overtime win over league foe Columbia in its final match.

GETTING A HEAD START

Players rarely develop into clutch performers by chance, and in Balleza’s case, there is a reason why no moment is ever too big for her.

From the moment she took up field hockey as a fourth grader, her time on the pitch has been filled with fierce competition from none other than her sister, Hannah, who is three years older. Off the pitch, the relationship has been anything but fierce, with Hannah providing the role of a loving mentor for Marissa.

“Hannah was the one who got me into field hockey, and once we both got started, we played with each other every day,” Marissa explained. “She’d get home from her high school practice and show me the new moves she had learned that day, and so every day, I was competing and learning with her.”

Practicing with someone three years older than her helped Marissa prepare well ahead of time for each stage of her career and gave her the confidence that she could compete with anyone. In no instance were these traits more evident than at the end of her freshman season of high school.

Marissa had played on her Severna Park’s JV team all year, but for the state playoffs, most of the JV team joined the Varsity team to provide depth and support. While the experience mainly involved observation from the bench for almost all of the young JV players, Marissa found herself taking the field in a critical semifinal match against her school’s bitter rival, South River.

“It was the end of my senior season, and I was super focused on the game, on ending my high school career on a good note,” Hannah said. “But all of a sudden, halfway through the game, I saw Marissa subbing in and I forgot all that because I realized it was the first time we’d ever played with each other in a real game. Then, she scored two goals to win us the game and send us to the finals, and I just lost it.”

The seniors all around her on the field naturally didn’t faze Marissa, because, after all, she trained with one every day at home.

TAKING HER GAME TO COLLEGE

In Marissa’s first season at Harvard, her sister’s guiding hand once again kept her on track as she had a tough start to her college career.

“I realized even before the season started that the college game was very different from anything I’d played before,” Balleza said. “In high school, you could just run and shoot, but in college, you couldn’t do that anymore. You needed to learn how to control your body, perfect your technique.”

The reminders that she needed to improve did not just come from within, however.

“Coach told me just a few weeks into preseason practice, ‘You’re lazy on defense,’” Balleza recalled. “That a was a big wake up call for me, and it was something that nobody wants to hear, but you kind of have to.”

With the support of her sister, then a senior at Cornell and captain of its field hockey team, Marissa once again made the adjustments needed to succeed.

“Playing with my sister and learning from her has helped me in ways that I’m not sure many other things could,” Balleza said. “She’s been such a big part of my life and helping me develop my skills and confidence.”

Even though Hannah now lives in Chicago, she still made it out to six of Marissa’s games in Cambridge this past season. The consistent support from her sister translated into consistent performance for Marissa on the field, as she netted 13 goals as a junior, good for the fourth-highest single-season scoring haul in Harvard history.

Combined with her 12 goals from freshman season and nine from sophomore year, Marissa now sits second on the Crimson all-time goal-scoring list with 34. Perhaps the more important number, however, is eight—the number of game-winning scores Marissa has, which ranks third-all time at Harvard.

As she heads into her senior season with a handful of school records in reach, Marissa can count on the fact that she’s not going to be chasing them alone. For the Ballezas, it has been a family affair all along.

—Staff writer George Hu can be reached at yianshenhu@college.harvard.edu