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By STEVE SEMBRAT steves@leader.net
Sunday, February 06, 2000 Page: 4C
WILKES-BARRE – Nobody came farther to pick up an award at Saturday’s Killer
Bees Athletic Club awards banquet than April Fronzoni.
The Wyoming Valley West field hockey star traveled about 3,000 miles during
the day to pick up her trophy as winner of the Joe Hoinski Memorial Award for
Excellence in Athletics in the scholastic female division.
The Larksville resident will fly the same distance today.
The past week, Fronzoni was training with the U.S. Under-21 National Field
Hockey team in San Diego, and was scheduled to be there until tomorrow. The
problem was, she also wanted to attend the banquet.
Gary Fronzoni told his daughter she could fly back for the event, but the
decision was up to her. April took little time in deciding to do that.
So she left camp on Saturday with the team’s permission. Her flight arrived
at Avoca at 4:20 p.m., and she made it to the Genetti Hotel & Convention
Center in Wilkes-Barre just in time for the banquet.
“I’ve heard so much about those awards,” Fronzoni said. “I wanted to
come back to experience it. Just to be here in this atmosphere, I wanted to
live it.”
Fronzoni didn’t know she was the winner until it was announced during the
banquet.
“Definitely a surprise,” she said. “A little unexpected.”
Fronzoni came to the banquet even though it might cost her a trip to Spain
and Barbados later in the year. She is one of 24 players on the U-21 squad
vying for 18 roster spots for those tours. Although team officials let her
come to the banquet, they said it might be a factor when it came time to make
the cuts.
Fronzoni has a 7 a.m. flight back to San Diego today, and will learn her
fate tomorrow.
Either way, she has a trophy and great memories of the event for her
journey.
Oh, yes, and some pretty neat photos, too.
Fronzoni, who is headed to the University of Michigan on an athletic
scholarship, got a chance to pose with a former Wolverine Greg Skrepenak.
The former All-American lineman at Michigan, who played seven years in the
NFL, said jokingly as he addressed the crowd during the banquet “I would have
been really pissed if that girl who is going to Michigan didn’t win.”
The picture of the two drew chuckles from those who watched it being taken,
as the 6-foot-8, 330-pound Skrepenak is about a foot-and-a-half taller and
more than 200 pounds heavier than Fronzoni.
“I didn’t know we were going to do that until my dad said we’ve going to
get a picture with him,” Fronzoni said. “I told him, go ahead, embarrass me
a little more. It made me blush.”