PRIDE PROFILE: DONI-MELISSA JANTZEN

Doni-Melissa Jantzen earned a special honor this summer when she was named to the United States Under-21 National Field Hockey team.

It is an honor she’s probably starting to get used to.

Jantzen first qualified for a USA roster spot when she was a sophomore at Shoreham-Wading River High School on Long Island and earned her way onto the Under-16 national team. She also played on the United States Under-19 Futures Elite team that traveled to Holland in 2003, and was named to the U.S. Under-21 team for the first time last year.

However, she says that her selection this summer might have been the one that meant the most to her. “I think it was even more of on honor this time around than it has been before,” she said. “They changed the format for selections and there was a whole new coaching staff. They were looking for players to compete for spots on the 2008 Olympic team, so everyone’s past status didn’t really matter any more.”

The selections were made after a grueling camp at Penn State University this summer, which featured three sessions a day. She was of 37 players to survive the final cuts, leaving her as one of 60 players currently in competition for the 2008 Olympics (and the only one from New York). The current United States national team has a 23-player roster.

Jantzen is also one of two members of her own family who are currently holding out hopes for their Olympic dreams. Her brother, Jesse, was a national champion wrestler at Harvard and is currently in training to make the United States Olympic Wrestling team in 2008.

Doni-Melissa Jantzen, admits, though that a brother-sister trip to China in three years probably isn’t likely. London in 2012, though, would make for a great story. “I’m still a little young to make it this time,” she said. “But just being in a position to compete for a spot is an unbelievable honor. It definitely puts a little more pressure on you to keep working hard and make sure you stay at that level, since there are always other people challenging for your spot.”

With all of her team USA accolades, Jantzen could have probably chosen almost anywhere to play in college. However, some personal issues distracted her during her senior year of high school. One of her friends committed suicide, and she found herself ignoring most of the recruiting pitches.

“I wasn’t in a good frame of mind at the time,” she says. “Hofstra ended up contacting me late, and it seemed like a good opportunity. My cousin (Kerri) was on the coaching staff and I didn’t have many other options. I was a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t take some of those opportunities I had more seriously, but everything turned out so well once I got to Hofstra that I have no regrets at all.”

Jantzen stepped into a program that was coming off its first season competing in the highly-competitive Colonial Athletic Association. When Hofstra made the move to the CAA, field hockey was one of the sports that seemed to have the toughest challenge looming in front of it. Old Dominion was a perennial top-five team, and William & Mary and James Madison also had notoriously strong programs.

After a solid season as a freshman, Jantzen really took off last year, finishing with a team-high 10 goals and earning third-team All-America status. As a team, the Pride turned some heads early in the season when it took Michigan State into overtime on Jantzen’s goal with 49 seconds left before  eventually falling 2-1. Michigan State eventually reached the Final Four.

The big story of last year came at the end of the season, when the Pride showed that it had successfully closed the gap with the CAA powers. Hofstra qualified for the CAA Tournament for the first time, and then it defeated top-seeded William & Mary 1-0 in overtime in the semifinals. The game was evenly-played as the Tribe held a narrow 13-10 edge in shots and each team earning six penalty corners. It was the Pride’s 10th shot, an overtime goal from graduated senior Sara Gonzalez that proved to be the difference.

The semifinal win looms as potenially a seminal moment for Jantzen and the Pride. “It was an awesome feeling,” she said. “When I first came here, I wasn’t sure how well we would be able to compete with some of the Virginia schools, but we’ve been recruiting better and better girls. I think we’ve all reached the point where we feel we can beat anyone. Some people said that William & Mary had a bad game, but I thought both teams played well and we just played a little better in overtime.”

Hofstra would go to drop the CAA championship game to Delaware, a loss which Jantzen hopes will serve as both motivation and a lesson to the Pride this year. “We need to work on being more consistent this season,” she said. “We’re capable of competing for the championship, but we need to play well all season so that we can hopefully get a good seed and maybe even host.”

If the Pride is to achieve those goals, Jantzen’s scoring prowess will be a pivotal component. “Doni is as prolific a goal scorer as we’ve ever had” said Hofstra Head Coach Kathy De Angelis. “What makes her such a dangerous threat is that she has tremendous speed as well as strong technical skill. A lot of players maybe have one or the other of those things, but she possesses both.”  

The Pride’s journey begins this weekend, when it hosts the Hofstra Pride Classic on Saturday and Sunday at Shuart Stadium. Hofstra faces Rhode Island on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. and then meets La Salle on Sunday at 11:30 a.m. The CAA looks to be tougher than ever, with the addition of top-10 Northeastern creating another top-level opponent in an already loaded conference. Jantzen says that she and her teammates are ready for the challenge.

“I can’t wait for the season to start,” said Jantzen. “We’ve all been waiting for this ever since last season ended.”

Of course, she managed to find some pretty productive ways to pass the time.