West Babylon, N.Y. - Four recipients of the East Coast Conference's annual John Smillie, Jr. Award were announced on Thursday morning. This year's honorees are Gretchen Beyer (Williamsville, N.Y.) of Daemen women's soccer, Olivia Cerbo (Middletown, N.J.) of St. Thomas Aquinas women's lacrosse, Kaitlyn Grzelaczyk (Seaford, N.Y.) of Mercy women’s lacrosse, and Ryan O’Neill (Bethpage, N.Y.) of Molloy men’s lacrosse
The award, named in honor of Athletic Trainer at former ECC member NYIT, John Smillie, Jr., who passed away after battling cancer, is given annually to a student-athlete or student-athletes who have overcome personal or physical challenges and hardships to pursue their intercollegiate athletic careers.
Gretchen Beyer
During her first year at Daemen in the Spring of 2021, Beyer was losing weight and dealing with inflammation and joint pain. After many tests and numerous doctor appointments, she was diagnosed with lupus. After the diagnosis, there was no firm answer if she would be able to play contact sports again due to kidney damage.
In her mind, she was going to return to playing soccer. At the start of that summer, she was cleared to work out and went back to working with a personal trainer/coach to prepare her for the 2021 season. Unfortunately, during her last training session at the end of July, she injured her knee - an ACL tear that required her to have surgery.
She was unable to get surgery right away since she needed to wean off of the medications she was taking plus complete prehab. She had surgery in October and worked hard in the athletic training room and again with a personal trainer to return to sport.
After lots of hard work during the spring and summer of 2022, this past fall she played her first season of soccer for Daemen, appearing in 16 games. Now a rising junior, she has become a leader for her teammates, and it was recently announced that she will be one of the team's captains for the 2023 season.
Olivia Cerbo
Cerbo is a junior who suffered a back injury from her neck to mid-back caused by degeneration and narrowing of her spinal canal. As a result, she deals with numbness, tingling, and pain in her upper extremities.
In order to compete this past year, she received two sports epidurals. However, she was not able to complete the lacrosse season due to her injury.
She is currently in the process of rehabbing her back so that she will be able to compete in her senior season in 2024. Despite her injury, Cerbo has remained in good spirits and has found other ways to contribute to her team.
Kaitlyn Grzelaczyk
Grzelaczyk had oral and maxillofacial surgery (double jaw surgery) and pallet expansion. For the surgery, her top jaw was cut and moved forward, held in place with screws and titanium plates. Her bottom jaw had two pieces cut out on each side in order to slide it back and was also held in place with screws and titanium plates. Then complications arose after multiple infections over several weeks. The implants had to be removed due to allergic reactions to titanium. After going through these surgeries, Grzelaczyk was named First Team All-ECC this season after recording 41 goals, seven assists, 48 points, and 22 draw controls, starting all 19 games. She helped lead the Mavericks to their second straight ECC Championship and ends her career with 99 goals, 47 assists, 146 points, and 68 draw controls.
Ryan O'Neill
O Neill transferred from NYIT in 2021 and made an immediate impact on the Molloy Men's Lacrosse program. He started and played in the first 10 games of the 2021 season before sustaining an injury to his knee. O'Neill endured extensive injury to the structures in his knee, including a full rupture of the ACL and would miss the remainder of the season. He underwent reconstructive surgery at the end of the school year, and recovered and rehabbed all summer. After sitting out the fall season, O'Neill was cleared and ready to return for the 2022 season. Unfortunately, after a few full practices back, he suffered another knee injury, which ended up resulting in another tear of his ACL, the same knee he had worked so hard to come back from. With the help of a great deal of functional testing, consults the team's physician, and plenty of conversations with the sports medicine staff, O'Neill opted to return to lacrosse without surgery, meaning he would be playing competitive collegiate lacrosse without an ACL, a feat that not many have done. He returned for the last playoff game of the season in 2022. Then in 2022-2023, without an ACL, Ryan never sat out of a practice, or a game and helped Molloy compete at the level they did on the defensive end, becoming a key component and valuable member of the program.
Information was provided by the athletic training staff at Daemen, Mercy, Molloy, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
