Wyoming Seminary’s Isabella Pisano (24) and Abby Santo react to their team winning the PIAA Field Hockey Class A State Championship in Whitehall. Seminary defeated Greenwood 3-0 for the title.
Fred Adams | For the Sunday Dispatch
WHITEHALL – Isabella Pisano does not give up easily.
When the transfer from Pittston Area did not originally crack the starting lineup as a sophomore at Wyoming Seminary this season, she kept putting in the work at practice to change that, grabbing a spot that she never yielded.
After going scoreless through four games with her new team, once Pisano broke through for the first time, it started a streak of scoring goals in six straight games.
And, when Greenwood goalie Lydia Miller stopped Pisano shots twice in a row from close range early in the second quarter of a scoreless Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Class A state championship game Nov. 21, the Hughestown resident was far from finished.
Pisano controlled a second straight rebound close to the end line to the right of the goal, took a step back and to her left to adjust the angle and sent a shot past Miller for what proved to be the game-winning goal in Wyoming Seminary’s 3-0 victory.
“I just had to keep going,” Pisano said. “People were asking me to pass the ball and stuff, but I really wanted it and knew it was going to open up eventually.”
It did.
“I was just trying to find an open spot in the cage,” Pisano said.
Pisano had a knack for finding and, in the case of the state championship game-winner, creating those open spots in the cage.
With three goals in three state tournament games, Pisano finished the season as Wyoming Seminary’s third-leading scorer. She had 12 goals and two assists with a pair of two-goal games in the postseason, against Hanover Area in the district tournament and New Hope-Solebury in the state quarterfinals.
Pisano helped Wyoming Seminary become the first field hockey team in Pennsylvania state history to win three straight state championships.
“I wasn’t even starting at the beginning of the year,” Pisano said, “but I just kept hustling at practice.”
And, she did not stop when the state championship was secured.
Pisano and her Electric Surge club teammates were in Richmond, Va. Friday competing in a tournament.
After attending camps for the sport as an elementary school student, Pisano played on a team for the first time when she joined the Pittston Area junior high team as a seventh-grader. She started playing for the Majestyx travel club the next year and now plays year-round after switching club teams.
Fitting in with a new team, even an established champion, is a task that Pisano managed with the efficiency that she scores goals.
“It was really exciting,” said Pisano, who has some of the same teammates with the Surge as with the Blue Knights. “I knew some of the girls from Sem before I went and everyone else was really welcoming.”
They wound up thankful for the new addition that helped in producing the program’s latest state championship in a perfect season that also included Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 and District 2 titles.
