Emma Walls was always an athlete.
She just needed to find the perfect sport.
Walls, a senior at Franklin Towne Charter, ran track and played volleyball growing up in Rhawnhurst. She was good at the sports, but neither were her true passion. So when she got to high school, her relationship with one of the coaches helped her find the perfect sport.
“I don’t know, I never really fit in those sports growing up, but I wanted to play something and my aunt is the coach for the field hockey team and she said I might like it if I try it,” said Walls, the niece of head coach Lindsay Kline. “I love playing for her, it’s so cool, but it can be hard. She’s harder on me sometimes because she expects more out of me, but she pushes me to be the best.
“It’s great because we’re so close. She babysat me all the time and we hung out all the time. She’s a great coach. And she leads us all so well. She’s understanding with our needs. If we have school work, she helps us, she’s very understanding with stuff like that. I love playing for her.”
That’s a perk, but it’s not her passion.
Her passion is playing field hockey, a game she just picked up when she got to Franklin Towne, and it didn’t take her long to become a star.
This year is her finest season yet, but she wasn’t too shabby right from the start.
“It wasn’t too bad, I got a lot of coaching during the preseason, and I picked it up pretty fast,” said Walls, who has 13 goals and seven assists during her career while playing center forward for the Warriors. “During the first game, I was confused at times, but by the second game, I got an assist and in my third game I remember I had two goals.
“I like to run the ball up the field and get it into the circle. Scoring, obviously, is the best feeling ever. The ball hits the back of the net and everyone is like, ‘Wow, great job!’ It’s fun when anyone scores. But really just being on a team overall. This team is such a team-oriented team. We all get along, we are all friends, we all talk, it’s like we’re immediate friends and we become closer every day.”
A lot of that is the character of the other girls.
A lot of it is their team leader.
Walls is one of the captains, and she thinks her biggest responsibility is making sure the team is united. That hasn’t been a problem at all.
She also takes it upon herself to serve as a coach on the field of sorts. Not only is she helping her teammates, she’s building stronger bonds with the team, which she said is all best friends.
“I always try to help the girls with whatever they need,” Walls said. “Sometimes they’ll text me, ‘Did you see anything I can work on.’ I’ll be very nice, but honest. I saw this, and then I’ll help them one on one. During the preseason, new players, I’d take them aside and show them things they want to learn. I always make sure everyone’s paying attention. And I’ll lead the drills a lot. Just do whatever I can to help the team run better.”
She’s not just helping the team.
She’s helping herself.
Walls has made a name for herself as a great student and field hockey player. Because of that, she has the opportunity to continue her field hockey career when she’s studying nursing at Gwynedd Mercy.
“I want to be a caring nurse, I’ll care deeply about the patients,” Walls said. “When I was younger I wanted to be a doctor. But as I got older, I liked the idea of nursing, seeing them in hospitals. My pop was in the hospital all the time, some would treat him really good, some would treat him like a patient.”
Family is always a big part of her life, and her “Pop,” who passed away, along with her grandmother play a huge role.
“He liked field hockey, he would go to a lot of games freshman year, but his health went down sophomore year right before my birthday,” Walls said. “He came to a few. The one freshman year, we made it to chip and they livestreamed it. They were watching it from home. My Gammy, too. She can’t make it to games, but she texts before every game, asks how the game was. She’s my best friend.”
She also values the rest of her family.
“Family is a big part of it,” she said. “Definitely my brother (Liam), I just love him, he comes to all my games, he’s there for everything. There’s not a thing about me he doesn’t know. And my parents, they support me, they buy me everything I need, they go to my games. Both of them are so supportive, my dad goes no matter how far it is.”
And then there’s her coach.
The bond those two have continues to grow stronger.
“I’d love to come back and coach Franklin Towne at some point in my life and I would love to coach someday,” Walls said. “She definitely is a big inspiration to me overall for everything. She inspires me to do something like that.
“I see myself in my aunt. The way we are, our personalities are very similar. The way we put work in. She’s a coach and a nurse, and I also want to be a nurse. We’re very similar. She sees me mess up even after four years, she’ll say, ‘Emma, you gotta fix this.’ I like it when she’s like that. I want to get better and she helps me get better.”
