This may have been DiMartino’s first year playing for the Rough Riders, but the Massapequa Park resident is no rookie to the sport. DiMartino, 21, estimates she has been playing soccer since she was six or seven. She played in middle and high school and even joined a club team, which allowed her to compete in tournaments outside of school. DiMartino also plays on scholarship for Boston College, where she is a senior.
 
DiMartino has known about the Rough Riders for a while, but never joined because she was playing for the Long Island Fury, a team in the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL), an independent national league a level below the Rough Riders.
 
“This was my first year coming [to the Rough Riders],” DiMartino said. “I was nervous, but I love the girls. They were awesome.”
 
No one was more excited about the Rough Riders’ acquisition of the talented midfielder than head coach John Fitzgerald. “I asked Gina each season if she wanted to play for us, but she was playing elsewhere,” Fitzgerald said. “This year, she contacted us and said that she wanted to play, so we said, ‘Great!’ We definitely took her with open arms because we know what a quality player and person she is.”
 
The Rough Riders, Fitzgerald explained, is a professional franchise, but the players are not considered pros, meaning they don’t get paid. This allows college players to remain eligible.
 
Fitzgerald has coached the Rough Riders for six seasons, though they were not consecutive. He coached from 1996 to 1998, winning the national championship in 1997. After a break, he resumed coaching in 2007. He said he has been following DiMartino for a while. “I’m looking for quality players, and she’s been recommended to me by several people and several coaches,” he said. “She’s definitely on another level. She’ll play a ball to a space where she anticipated that a player was going to make a run, where another player might not have seen that.”
 
DiMartino played in six of the team’s 14 games in 2009; she missed several contests early in the season due to scheduling conflicts with summer school. However, the fact that she played in nearly all the games in the season’s second half is quite impressive. According to Fitzgerald, the Rough Riders practice twice a week. He said there were about 30 players at each training session vying for a spot on an 18-player game-day roster. At the practice before a match, the players are told who will be on the roster. Fitzgerald feels this keeps the team in competitive spirit, since everyone is aiming for a spot in the game.
 
It is clear that DiMartino loves the sport. A majority of her time is consumed by soccer. The Rough Riders start training in April – college students don’t participate until May – and the team’s last game is in July. Playoffs last until early August, but the team didn’t make it that far this year.
 
At Boston College, DiMartino practices seven days a week, which can get hectic when combined with classes and schoolwork. “We have to do morning classes and night classes because practice runs in the afternoon,” she said. She estimates the team practices about four hours each weekday. Weekend times vary, since games are played on weekends and practices must be scheduled accordingly.
 
DiMartino doesn’t mind though, because she loves everything about the sport. “I think it’s just the teams that I go to, with all the girls, just meeting new people,” she said. “My team is who I hang out with all the time. You make such good friends, and then you’re playing with them on the field [and] off the field.” DiMartino met most of her friends playing soccer. She’s still in touch with the friends she played with in high school.
 
Additionally, DiMartino was named to the 2009 Women’s Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy Watch List. The Hermann Trophy is considered the highest individual honor in NCAA Division I soccer. Christie Welsh, also of Massapequa Park, won the award in 2001 while playing for Penn State.
 
When she does have free time, DiMartino likes spend time with her friends and family. She enjoys listening to music – The Fray is a favorite band – and watching movies. When she’s not at college, DiMartino lives at home with her family. She has four siblings – an older brother, an older sister, and two younger sisters.
 
DiMartino’s family is the reason she started playing soccer. Her 22-year-old sister, Christina, who plays professionally for the FC Gold Pride in the WPS, got her into the sport. Her two younger sisters also play. Rosie, 14, plays on a national team and Vicki, 17, will be attending Boston College as a freshman.
 
“I’m excited,” Vicki said. “Gina loved [Boston College] and she told me about it, and I went there and I loved it, too. She played a big factor in me going there.” The girls were on the same team once before, when Vicki was a freshman in high school and Gina was a senior.
 
Up next for the Eagles’ senior is completing her undergraduate degree in elementary education and human development. DiMartino wants to be an elementary school teacher, but soccer will still be part of her future. “I hope to play professional,” she said, “so we’ll see where it goes after my college season.”
 
Fitzgerald is confident that Gina will remain in the soccer circle for a while. “She’s going to be an up-and-coming player,” he said. “We’re going to see her on the radar.”