Mamma mia! What a player!

"Roehrig" is not Italian.

Well, Jenny Roehrig, midfielder for the Massachusetts women’s soccer team, is – it’s just her last name that’s not. That’s because her dad is German and Irish. Her mom, Maria, on the other hand, was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1959.

Maria’s parents, Carlo and Ersilia Tumminello, immigrated to America with their daughter in 1961, intrigued by the freedoms and opportunities the United States offers. In 1963, Ersilia gave birth to Maria’s younger sister, Laura.

After growing up in a proud Italian household where red, white and blue are among the most flaunted colors, Maria joined the New York Police Department in 1981. It was there that she fell for her partner, Willy Roehrig later in that year. There must have been amore in the midst of the NYPD, as the two married in 1983.

But this story isn’t about them. It’s about their daughter, Jenny, and her undying passion for the game of soccer. A passion that, perhaps, can be attributed to where her mother hails from.

What soccer means to Italy can be summed up in one word: everything. The love the Italians manifest for their national sport is one hard to duplicate on any continent. Every match is followed diligently on television or radio. Replica jerseys of beloved players, who are closer to rock stars than athletes, are donned by young Italian children. And little soccer games pop up spontaneously in the streets.

“It’s similar to the way Americans embrace football or baseball. They’re very enthusiastic about it. It’s their major sport,” says Maria Roehrig. “To them it’s constant action. They feel it is the true athlete because as an athlete in soccer you have to constantly be moving. And they think that in itself is skill, is excitement and they just really enjoy it.”

This may seem like the type of craze Americans have for their sports – but it’s much more than that.

“Just picture football, baseball, and hockey here in America rolled into one... that's soccer in Italy,” Jenny adds. “Soccer is everything to them.”

It’s not uncommon to see a group of people playing a game on a sidewalk or in the middle of the street. Only the severe injury or illness could ever prevent an Italian from lacing up his or her shoes and booting the ball around. A stroll through the back streets of any Italian town can remind one of the obsession for high school football that grips states like Texas and Louisiana. It is this type of fervor that Jenny Roehrig – who has been to Italy four times – has played with throughout her four years at UMass.

Just finishing her year as senior captain Jenny wrapped up a collegiate soccer career played with a passion so intense that it had to stem from Italy. For four years, she left everything she had on the field. UMass coach Jim Rudy says he always knew what he would get out of Jenny – a quality effort every time day in and day out, with a high priority of hard work.

“Usually when I give them a break – a five-minute break to go get water – she usually was of the first two or three that is back on the field right away like, ‘OK, I’m ready to go. What’s up now? What do you need?’” he says.

This is probably because of whom Jenny has in her cheering section. Rudy describes Jenny’s parents are like “the ultimate fans.” They make sure that at least one parent goes to each game. Rudy says Maria is very passionate about soccer and very supportive of all the Minutewomen, not just her own.

When the final horn of Jenny’s college career sounded, she had started all 70 games and recorded 11 goals and 14 assists, for 36 points. But these numbers didn’t spring out of nowhere. They were the result of a young life dedicated to her favorite sport.

Jenny – and her younger brother, Willy, 18 – started playing soccer just like any other kid, kicking the ball around with friends in neighborhood yards. When Jenny was four years old Maria signed her up for St. Margaret’s, a church soccer league near their home in New York. Maria thought it would be a good idea to get Jenny running around and playing a sport for an organized team.

Jenny’s dad and his friends were her first coaches and she got to play with almost the same coed group for four years, something she loved. An environment in which she got to play against friends from school and in which parents were all friends made games both competitive and fun. One year she even played on an all-boys team, which she says was a great experience. But Jenny always took it a little more seriously than her friends did.

It wasn’t until Jenny began playing for her first club team, the Newfield Lightning, however, that her parents began suspecting that what started as a recreational hobby was beginning to snowball into something else. Willy began to notice Jenny doing certain things not so typical of a girl her age – his daughter would regularly play sick or even injured. Some Italian passion leaking out, perhaps?

“At about eight years old, that’s when she started really, seriously playing hard,” Willy says. “She was getting pretty focused. I could see the focus coming in and it just got more intense as she went on.”

Jenny Roehrig would play banged up or under the weather – anything to keep her on the field. This is when it first looked like Jenny might wind up playing soccer in college. She began showing the same infatuation citizens of Italy take to soccer. If they can’t play it on a field, or in the street or in an alley, they’ll play it on the beach. There a little soccer courts set up on the sand so people can play a pick-up game whenever they please. There is an ardor for soccer incomparable to anything in America.

When the Lightning eventually folded Jenny played for the Sachem Angels of the Long Island Select Program, where she played against the best female players on Long Island. Her first year, the team won the state finals for the first time ever. It was there that Jenny developed some of her fondest soccer memories.

Though she played only four years with the Angels, Jenny says she and her teammates were like sisters and that the parents – especially the cheering posse of moms – grew very close as well. Then, like everything else good, the squad started to diminish and it was time Jenny, who had also been on a New York State Olympic Developmental Program (ODP) team (a higher level than Long Island Select Program) to move on to the Massapequa
Spirit.

It was her success there, cocktailed with her accolades at Newfield High School in Selden, N.Y., that first caught Rudy’s eye. As a Wolverine, Roehrig tallied 39 goals and 42 assists (120 points) en route to becoming the school’s all-time leading scorer. During her senior year, she amassed 39 points on nine goals and 13 assists. Her stats got her named All-County twice, All-League three times and All-Conference twice throughout her high school career. Rudy saw the love the young Roehrig had for soccer and recruited her to the Maroon and White.

Where did this passion come from? Was it the product of good parenting? An upbringing that preached hard work? Or both, combined with having a mother from a foreign shore where enthusiasm for soccer is as pure as it can get?

“My cousins play soccer, indoor soccer and outdoor soccer, even though now they’re professionals, they’re doctors, dentists and lawyers, they still play soccer at least once a week. It’s really big for them,” Maria says.

“The last time we were down in Sicily, [Laura’s husband] Danny and my cousins, who are younger than I am but older than Jenny, had started a soccer game out on the street,” she recalls.
Willy remembers one instance when Jenny was about three or four years old that defined the Italian love for soccer. The Roehrigs were visiting Maria’s aunt, Franca, and uncle, Giuseppe, at their home in Italy. Jenny started playing soccer with Franca and Giuseppe’s kids, Piero, Fabbio and Mario, in the house surrounded by glass and expensive ornaments and decreatives.

“I’d be like, ‘Be careful!’ and the aunt and uncle were like, ‘Oh, no problem,’” he says. “You know, like nice, laid-back Italians – ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. Let them play, let them play.’”

But the Tumminellos’ embrace of soccer is only a small sampling of the type of romanticism the Italians take to the game.

“Soccer is everything to them. They play soccer everywhere,” Jenny says. “They cherish the moments they have when they play. I mean, they have fun, but at the same time they take it seriously. Everyone is so competitive but shows such passion for the game, even if it isn’t on an actual soccer field.”

It is with this sort of zeal that Jenny tries to exhibit in every game she plays. Though her UMass career is over, she says soccer will always be in her. If she can find the time from her job at Goldman Sachs, a full-service global investment banking and securities firm she has committed to, she would like find some intramural soccer leagues to play in.

Even though the family is not rooted in the old country anymore, the Roehrigs hope to make sure by exercising such a for the European game and such close family ties that their Americanism and pride in their heritage will never die. And though they love calling Italy a second home, the family couldn’t be happier that they came to the United States and now have – on top of the liberties and opportunities of this country – have having an American soccer player to show for it.

Like Carlo Tumminello says, “It’s the besta move I ever make in my life.”