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10/17/2008 - WOMEN'S SOCCER
Stetson's Super Soph - Daytona Beach News Journal
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DELAND, Fla. -Tessa Gavilsky was drawn to Florida the way so many people are -- the sun, surf and sand.
"I don't like being cold at all, so I love it here," Gavilsky says. "I love going to the beach in December and calling people back home when it's snowing there and saying, 'I'm at the beach right now.'"
There's one other thing that drew Gavilsky to the Sunshine State -- the opportunity to play soccer for Stetson.
That's working out quite well. The 5-foot-10 midfielder/forward is just three points shy of tying Stetson's season record for points (25) now held by Melissa This (1996) and Kristy Porcelli (1999). An Atlantic Sun Conference All-Freshman selection last year, Gavilsky is the conference leader with 22 points and shares the lead at nine goals with Kennesaw State's Rachel Baer and North Florida's Katelin Swift.
Stetson coach Julie Orlowski, who grew up in the St. Louis area and has longtime high school and club contacts throughout that hotbed of youth soccer, first saw Gavilsky while on a recruiting trip to check out a goalkeeper. That keeper needed some work, but Orlowski did have a question for her coach.
"Who's that No. 2?" Orlowski asked.
No. 2 was Gavilsky, and she quickly became No. 1 on Stetson's recruiting list.
Orlowski signed Gavilsky to a national letter of intent before she played her senior year at Granite City High School and became just the second player south of the Chicago area to win the Gatorade Girls High School Soccer Player of the Year award in Illinois.
Gavilsky at first expressed some concern about fitting in at Stetson, but as Orlowski says "she fit in from the time she stepped off the plane." That has as much to do with her humble personality as it does with her immense athletic talent.
