Julie Wojcik loves her mom.
But Mother’s Day? Not so much.
Well, to be fair, it’s just one specific Mother’s Day that will always have negative connotations, and that was in 2021. For it was on that day, while playing for her PDA South travel soccer team, that Wojcik had her right knee taken out from under her by an opposing player.
“I thought I was fine, but it turned out I tore my ACL and meniscus,” Wojcik said. “I had to get surgery done, which put me back about a year. I still feel it was a year and a half before I felt comfortable coming back to play soccer.”
After missing the entire 2021 high school season, Julie returned to the Bordentown High team last fall. Half of her junior season was just trying to regain belief in herself as a player before finally hitting her stride.
“Last year we were a little worried,” coach Dominic Castaldo said. “She came back in the spring and we didn’t know how she would be. It took a little while but by mid-to-end of season and all of this past summer she’s been outstanding.
“She wasn’t in pain. It was a lot mental. She played during the summer and spring but she was still feeling her way because she’s playing older people. She plays at a very high level outside of here, so I know she did some work and she was back into it. The problem was, coming in you’re always gonna be a little bit tentative. It took her a while to get stronger and get back to game fitness and game mentality.”
She began to come on in October, and finished with a team-leading 11 assists. Her eight goals were second on the team, behind the graduated Victoria Wheeler.
As a senior, Wojcik will not only be integral to the team’s attack on the field, but as a leader.
“We’re young,” Castaldo said. “We do have seniors, but we don’t have a lot of varsity-experienced players. We have a handful. Some of them are young players that we’ve thrown into situations.
“So her experience and leadership is number one. And her downright play and competitiveness will bring the level up automatically.”
Is Wojcik ready for her new role?
“It’s hard for me, because I’ve been focusing on myself a lot, now to uplift the whole team is something I have to get used to,” she said. “I’m definitely ready, I’m excited to do it with my seniors, all my best friends.”
One thing is certain. She feels better about herself entering this season than she did last year.
“I still feel I could get more confidence back,” she said. “It definitely took longer to come back and play than I thought. But I’m definitely excited for my senior year. I just want to do the best I can playing with these girls and just have fun with it.”
Wojcik deserves to have some fun after the last two years.
“It was the first time I didn’t play soccer in my whole life,” said Wojcik, who had a stellar freshman season with six goals and seven assists. “It definitely took a toll on me. And it happened going into my college recruiting season. It’s been hard mentally and physically.”
Despite all that, she still remained part of the team, coming out every day to practice and games. “That’s the kind of kid she is,” Castaldo said.
After surgery, Julie faced the usual rehab drudgery. She did physical therapy for four months, followed by constant days in the gym strengthening her knee. After getting cleared in April 2022, Wojcik started back with PDA South by playing 10-minute increments in games.
“The biggest thing was my confidence,” she said. “I lost all my confidence. I feel that to play soccer and play it at your best, you need to be confident. I definitely struggled with that, which I think affected me in the games.
“The more I played, the more I stopped worrying about the little mistakes I made and I stopped blaming it on my knee and started focusing on the good things I did.”
Through it all, she had help at home.
“I definitely have a good support system with my parents, they lifted me up a lot,” Wojcik said. “I just tried my best to trust the process. It’s only temporary. I always told myself I would come back stronger.”
Once she began to get back the feel of the game — not to mention adjusting to the brace she had to wear — Wojcik began to look like her old self. Her numbers improved in the second half of last season, as she had four goals and eight assists in the Scotties final eight games.
Wojcik wants the fun to continue, although where she will play on the field was still in question entering summer training camp.
“Last year I played forward, but I’m definitely a midfielder,” she said. “I feel like we have a lot of players to work with where I could be a distributor. I never really played forward, but it definitely does mean trying to score more goals. I don’t mind it”
Castaldo feels that Wojcik’s abilities gives him flexibility on where to play her.
“She still has that playmaking ability but she’s a different type of player from when she was younger. She’s a very tough, hard player. She’s always going, she presses everywhere, looking to win balls back,” he said. “She looks to make her teammates better. Going forward she’s very unselfish, but you see a little more maturity and she’s selfish when she needs to be. The biggest thing is that leadership by example.”
Amid her duties on the field, Wojcik is also busy off it as she searches for a college that will take her for academics and her soccer ability.
“I’m looking at a lot of local schools, I want to stay close to home,” she said. “I want to be where I’m happy, even without soccer. I want to go to school and have fun for the next four years.”
She still hopes soccer is part of the equation. “I definitely questioned it with my injury — ‘Do I really love this enough? Did my injury ruin it for me?’” she said. “But I think since I’ve played forever it’s too hard to give it up.”
Losing that junior year to injury was damaging, but Wojcik is hoping to turn that into a positive. She has had talks with The College of New Jersey, Monmouth, Delaware and West Chester, among others.
“They want you to be 100 percent,” she said. “But it also makes them feel like ‘She’s been through it, it makes her work harder, she wants it more than other players because she knows what it means to lose it.’ I definitely feel like it’s been a good thing for me. I’ve been through a few serious things, and in something like the recruiting process you just have to trust the process.”
Julie Wojcik will be a key player for Bordentown soccer this year. (Photo by Rich Fisher.),
