Mount Saint Mary Academy coach Roald Jornick often hears that question. He sees some players in New Jersey who are simply fast. Others may have a good shot but lack other traits.
Fiorella Perone, on the other hand, has been taking the state by storm with a diverse skill set and a relentless desire to score and create opportunities for her teammates to succeed.
“It’s just that drive that I think separates her from being not just good, but being one of the best,” says Jornick, a Netherlands native who has coached girls’ soccer in the United States for 13 years and is the assistant director of coaching at NJ Premier, a club soccer organization.
Perone, a Mount Saint Mary junior being recruited to play Division I soccer and who has already scored 53 goals in high school including 14 of her team’s 30 goals this season as of mid-October, believes that her drive can be traced back to her upbringing.
A Colonia native who is part Italian and part Peruvian, Perone grew up competing in soccer all the time with her two older brothers. Her father and uncle also have a soccer background, and her father later coached her when she began playing organized soccer at age seven.
“I think I always just had a competitive side to me and I just loved playing,” Perone said. “I have such a passion for playing.”
Perone steadily developed while playing travel soccer in Metuchen for a handful of years, then moved over to club soccer with U.S. PARMA for one year and then NJ Elite, which is now NJ Premier and where she has played year-round with showcases for five years. Perone even traveled with Premier to Amsterdam this summer and spent a week training with and playing against the pro team PSV as well as semi-pro teams with teenagers as old as 19.
“That was absolutely an amazing opportunity,” Perone said. “I definitely loved it. It was so interesting to see how differently they played over there. They don’t have high school over there. They just have club, so they’re with their club team all the time and the training is just so much different.”
Perone was primarily drawn to Mount Saint Mary because of the academics, but she knew she wanted to play soccer there because Phillip Iuliano, the school’s soccer coach during her freshman year, was the director of PARMA.
It has also been the perfect place to grow because of the school’s faith aspect.
“I’ve gone to private Catholic school my whole life, so my faith is very important to me,” Perone said. “I play with wrist tape and I put a Bible verse on there and a cross, and I just try to be a good leader and be a good teammate, help my teammates get better on and off the field, and have good sportsmanship.”
Perone has been honing her craft on the field for the past two years under Jornick, who she says has improved the Mount Saint Mary program with better passing and movement away from the ball.
Jornick praises Perone for being an extension of coaching on the field with her positivity, leadership, guidance and versatility as a striker. The team can always rely on her to score a momentous goal and raise everyone’s spirits.
“When we’re dominant, she plays with the back to the goal and she’s holding up the plays for us,” Jornick said. “When we’re the lesser dominant team on the field, she’s able to run in behind and she has scored a lot of long-distance goals, but also dribbling, outplaying her direct opponent in getting that opportunity for herself. She made herself just an all-around player.”
Perone jokes that her favorite way to score is “whatever gets the ball in the back of the net.” But one of her favorite aspects of soccer is moving the ball around as a team with short passes until there is an opening within the defense instead of forcing wasteful shots from long range.
Opposing teams are sending more double teams her way these days, but Perone is constantly looking for ways to adapt and become an even better player.
“If they’re playing aggressive, move the ball quicker, make more runs, just do whatever you can to get on the ball really,” said Perone, who has also dished out 11 assists during her high school career.
Skyland Conference coaches voted Perone to the First Team All-Mountain Division last fall as a sophomore, and she is likely to receive even more accolades as a junior and a senior.
But despite her stardom on the field, she never approaches games with the mindset that she needs to score a certain number of goals. It’s simply about preparing to perform well and then having fun on the field with her teammates.
The stellar results, as they have been since she was seven years old, will take care of themselves.
“I think I’ve always had a good shot and I’ve always been just aggressive with a lot of energy,” Perone said. “I think I’ve just continued to develop that as I got older, especially when I got to NJ Premier, I definitely took the next step to become a better player. I think I’ve just always had the drive to win. I want to win and I just want to compete.”