LEWISTON – Run into her on the street, Marisa Zamrock will give you a shy smile, say ‘Excuse me,’ and go along her merry way.

Run into her on a sheet of ice, and you wouldn’t get the chance to finish thinking the phrase ‘Excuse me’ before she’d blow right by you with the puck.

And, she’d likely put that puck in the back of the net by the time the words came out of your mouth.

“If you can skate, all you have to be able to do after that is stickhandle the puck,” Zamrock said. “Then you’re fine.”

Sounds simple enough.

It looked it, too, for Zamrock, who as a freshman for Lewiston High School this season, scored 32 goals and recorded 19 assists for 51 points in 21 games. The season ended on a positive note, too: The Lewiston girls’ team avenged an earlier loss to Biddeford and won a state title – the first ever MPA girls’ hockey title. In that game, Zamrock again shone.

For her prowess with the puck, and for her accomplishments on the ice as a leader, Zamrock is the 2009 Sun Journal girls’ hockey player of the year.

“The best part was the goals in the playoffs,” Zamrock said sheepishly. “The regular season, those are nice, but the playoff goals were better, even if they were just one or two, because they meant something more for the team.”

It’s that team attitude that shone early, even when she began last summer skating with girls five and six years older than her.

“It never really dawned on me at the time, but in that league we play in during the summer, they allow post-grads to play, too,” Lewiston coach Ron Dumont said. “She was playing against some really good competition … and she more than held her own.”

“I’ve been playing with older girls for a little bit anyway,” Zamrock said. “I felt like I was right in where I should be. I felt like I was smaller than some of them, but I still felt I could play at this level.”

Play she did. And she played well.

“I was worried at first, like, when I started to score I thought maybe the seniors were going to hate me,” Zamrock said. “But the team really welcomed me well, they were just glad I was on the team and I was happy to be there, too.”

Even a leg injury couldn’t slow the speedy forward down. She played hurt for a while, and only had two games all season in which she failed to register a point.

“I didn’t ever want to tell Coach I was hurt,” Zamrock said. “I always told him I was fine. Every single day before a game, he’d ask, ‘Marisa, how’s your leg?’ It’d be a daily ritual, and I’d say, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ Some days it hurt, but I wanted to go back out there.”

“She’s a kid you don’t have to motivate,” Dumont said. “She loves hockey, and she always wants to be out there.”

The scary part for the rest of the league? She’s was just a freshman this season. Her goal for the next campaign? Get even better.

“I just try to step up my game for next season,” Zamrock said. “Hopefully I get more goals and we can get back-to-back state championships as a team. The team works really well together, and hopefully we can do this next season, too.”