MIDFIELD MAESTRO: Zoe Sarnak displays two of her many talents, recently performing on stage, left, and playing soccer for the Harvard women’s soccer team in 2006. Sarnak, a stellar midfielder for the Princeton High girls’ soccer team from 2001-04, will be inducted in the PHS Athletic Hall of Fame this Saturday. (Photos provided by Zoe Sarnak and Harvard Athletic Communications)

By Bill Alden

As an award-winning composer and lyricist, Zoe Sarnak relishes the process of combining her talents with others to create productions.

For Sarnak, working together to achieve something special stems naturally from her experience as a star midfielder for the Princeton High girls’ soccer program more than a decade ago.

“Team sports were really good because they taught me how to play a certain leadership role on a team; I definitely think they helped me in my career,” said Sarnak, a 2005 PHS grad now based in New York City whose professional resume includes such theater and songwriting honors as winning the Jonathan Larson Award and the Davenport Contest and being named as a finalist for the Fred Ebb Award, Kleban Prize, Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award, and the NY Stage & Film’s Founders Award.

“I work in a collaborative art form and everything we make, whether it is a full length musical or a musical piece for a TV show, is always collaborative. It is a little different than being a novelist. Team sports made me very comfortable in that kind of working together and saying we are going to work this out.”

Sarnak produced some award-winning work on the soccer field for the Tigers as the central midfielder was a regional All-American, a four-time All-County selection, and a two-time Central New Jersey top 20 performer.

This Saturday at Mercer Oaks Country Club, Sarnak will be getting yet another accolade as she will be part of the 14th class inducted into the PHS Athletic Hall of Fame.

She will be joined by Tom Butterfoss ’68, Kathy Woodbridge ’75, John Kellogg ’80, Steve Budd ’81, Aileen Causing ’87, and Alexz Henriques ’07, along with the 2009 boys’ soccer state champion team.

Looking back on her PHS soccer career, Sarnak was excited to make an impact from the start.

“It is a really new experience to play varsity your freshman year,” said Sarnak, who took up the game when she was in nursery school and started playing travel soccer when she was 7.

“I was one of three freshman on varsity and the senior captains did a really great job of making us feel immediately a part of things even thought we were the newbies. I was lucky I got to dive in and start my freshman year.”

As Sarnak went through her PHS career, she refined her skills and started to dictate tempo for the Tigers.

“In my freshman year, I was contributing in flashes of goal scoring and assists and things like that but I wasn’t controlling the pace of the game in the same way as I got better,” said Sarnak, who went on to Harvard University and played two seasons for its women’s soccer team.

“I was seeing the field and got a little bit stronger. I hope that as I got older, I got to be more of a leader and function the way that those captains did for me.”

While taking a lead role, Sarnak’s most vivid high school soccer memories center on the squad’s accomplishments and unity.

“We had a really great team my freshman, sophomore, and junior years,” said Sarnak, who also starred for some high-powered club programs and was part of the Olympic Development Program with U.S. Youth Soccer.

“We were in various championship games, so you get used to playing in those situations. There were night games with big crowds; I fell in love with it. I have played on a lot of teams during my career and played Division I soccer in college but I think with PHS soccer, there was something about our team. The chemistry and the family feeling was the strongest I ever had. It was really special.”

Along the way, Sarnak developed a strong bond with PHS head coach Greg Hand.

“He is the best; he is probably the biggest mentor I had at PHS,” said Sarnak, who also played four seasons of basketball in high school and did track in the spring of her senior year.

“I had him as a teacher and a coach. One of the reasons I did track my senior spring season is that we realized I was pretty decent at throwing javelin. Who knew? I wanted to do one more season with him.”

Hand, for his part, realized that he had something special in the midfield with the skilled Sarnak.

“Zoe had an incredible ability to receive difficult balls, what Bob Bradley used to call the ugly balls, and play them with one touch,” said Hand.

“She could just not handle it, but play that first touch into a space away from a defender and see what is going on, near or far from her, to keep us moving dynamically. She was incredible at changing speed and direction.”

In addition, Sarnak demonstrated a knack for making her teammates better.

“She had this remarkable ability to have her head up and to not only see who is open in space but to anticipate where a person might be going and put the ball into that spot,” recalled Hand, noting that the Tigers posted records of 17-2-1, 16-3-1, 13-6, and 7-9 during Sarnak’s career.

“The whole team learned what to expect from her; things they might not normally expect playing with other center midfielders. In those years, there was a strength of team from front to back. Zoe was the glue that was keeping the team functioning as a unit from freshman year forward because she had this central position. She was executing that from the start, but constantly growing in an environment where we had terrific upperclass leadership. I think she grew into that.”

In Hand’s view, Sarnak was a clear choice to be selected for the PHS Hall of Fame.

“She is no doubt deserving of this honor and being recognized as somebody who was the complete package,” said Hand of Sarnak, who tallied 37 goals and 26 assists during her PHS career. “She was extremely talented with a character to match.”

While Sarnak focused on soccer at PHS, she also started cultivating her musical talent.

“I started writing music when I was 11 or 12 and I took piano and guitar lessons,” said Sarnak.

“At PHS I sang in choir and I was in the studio band. I played jazz guitar. At the time, I think I
probably spent more time playing soccer than anything else. Music was something I did more for me. I didn’t have the same sort of sense that I am going to try to get into Berklee or Juilliard or something like that. It was just something I loved and did for myself.”

Sarnak’s love of soccer resulted in her playing for the Harvard women’s soccer team.

“My role was different every year; in my freshman year, I came off the bench and played as a sub in the end of the first half and then again in the second half,” said Sarnak.

“I was playing more of an outside mid position. In my sophomore year because I was playing center back, I was starting and playing the whole game or I wasn’t playing. It was more binary my sophomore year. It was all good. It was an interesting experience. I am really deeply glad that I did it; it was a dream for me to play college soccer.”

In her junior year at Harvard, Sarnak got on the path to making music a career.

“I started working on a musical and then one got produced while I was at school,” said Sarnak.

“Some people came to see it and said you could do this professionally. I think that was the first time I was like ‘oh wow.’ It is amazing I could do this thing that I love and have that be my job.”

Currently, Sarnak, 32, is engrossed in a number of songwriting projects.

“I am doing the writing thing full time, which is great,” said Sarnak, who went on to get a masters in performance studies from NYU and has taught some college courses.

“I do a variety of things. The majority of my work is in musical theater, so I write music and lyrics for musicals but I also write songs that get placed on TV shows. I actually am developing a musical TV show.”

Applying lessons she learned from fine-tuning her soccer skills has helped Sarnak better handle the demands of creating her music.   

“The daily practice of it teaches you to be disciplined,” said Sarnak, who also occasionally performs on stage at New York City establishments and events, singing her work.

“Writing is the kind of thing where you have a draft due in a few months and you have to work at it every day or else you are going to end up a week before your deadline thinking ‘oh no.’ That kind of daily discipline is definitely from sports.”

Getting selected for the PHS Hall of Fame allowed Sarnak to revisit her sporting exploits.

“It was so unexpected, once I was reading about it I was so excited,” said Sarnak, who has played in soccer leagues in New York and still kicks the ball around for fun.

“You just don’t think about it. When I was playing, if you had said to me this is going to happen, I would have been overwhelmed. It brought me back to how much playing PHS soccer meant to me and how much it still means to me.”