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Hollywood friend? Three-sport star? That?s de Sion?s FlorzakBy J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH
The Kansas City Star
The 6-foot blonde with the basketball beckoned attention on an early-morning flight from Kansas City to Orlando, and so did the budding rock star with the long sideburns.
The girl had noticed him immediately and wondered whether her eyes were playing tricks on her. She had seen him perform among many others the night before at the ?Red, White and Boom? concert, but, she thought, they always look different in person.
Sitting directly behind her on the plane, the young man muscled up the courage to tap her on the shoulder and then asked a question to which he already knew the answer.
?Hey,? he said. ?Do you play basketball??
?Yeah,? she responded, ?I?m playing in a tournament in Orlando.?
?I?m Tyler Hilton,? he said. ?Nice to meet you. Come sit back here with me.?
So, Anna Florzak, a senior point guard at Notre Dame de Sion, agreed. She was right all along. This was Tyler Hilton, the singer/songwriter and actor.
Anna and Tyler talked about music. They talked about their families. They talked about their dreams, and at the end of the flight, Tyler invited Anna to his signing that afternoon at a Virgin Megastore.
They?ve since hung out twice in Kansas City and twice at Tyler?s shows in Iowa. Anna also has gotten to meet Hillary Duff, who performs with Tyler.
?That is something that would happen to Anna,? says Morgan Henderson, a Sion senior center. ?I?m happy for her. She has a rock star for a friend.?
Tyler, who played Elvis in ?Walk the Line? and stars in the WB?s ?One Tree Hill,? even stopped by for one of Anna?s 6 a.m. cross country practices this fall.
?He ran probably a good 3 miles,? Anna says. ?I told the girls that Tyler was coming, so don?t freak out. Just be yourself.?
That was easy for Anna, who like Tyler is a star in the making. While Tyler?s star shines in Hollywood, Anna?s is brightest at Sion, where she?s become quite the celebrity herself over four years as the school?s most prolific athlete.
?The underclassmen worship the ground she walks on,? says Reynold Middleton, Anna?s cross country coach at Sion. ?She?s like a God. When eighth-graders come visit the school, some will say, ?I want to see Anna, I want to see Anna.? They just love her.?
To Anna, Tyler is just another successful friend, no different from the basketball players and cross country runners whom she has befriended across the country.
?He has goals that he wants to achieve just like I do,? Anna says. ?I love being around hard-working people who know how to achieve what they want.?
This was not easy, becoming a star, an all-state selection in cross country, basketball and track.
Until she hit a growth spurt in early high school, Anna was usually the smallest girl on the court. She admits that she got pushed around early on.
?She had to overcome her size,? says Acey Florzak, her mother. ?She?s always had to work harder for everything in her life. A lot of people think this has come easy for her. I?m telling you, she has sacrificed since she was 5.?
In fourth grade, Anna and her father went to the Big 12 women?s basketball tournament. Anna saw the Iowa State fans take over the town and decided she wanted to play point guard for the Cyclones. Every step taken since then has been with that in mind.
?She?s one of those kids,? Acey says. ?I never had to tell her not to have a soda. She just knew that wasn?t going to be a good thing for her as an athlete.?
The Florzaks live near the airport, and Anna chose to attend Sion, which is 45 miles away in southern Kansas City, because of its academic and athletic reputation.
Anna, an only child of superhuman parents, wakes up before 6 a.m. every morning. She eats breakfast with her father, who drives her to Sion. She?s there by 6:45, when she shoots baskets in the gym for 30 minutes while her father rebounds. Then, at 7:15, she goes to the library to study before school starts. Even when it?s cross country season and the team practices in the morning, Anna and her dad find time to shoot together.
There?s not a day in the year when Anna doesn?t go to a practice or a game after school, and her mother picks her up and drives her back to the Northland. The Florzaks have certainly proven they have the drive to succeed.
?It has been a gift,? Acey says. ?It has never been anything I regretted to have my daughter in the car with me for an hour at night. There?s no telephone, there?s no radio, we just talk, and she studies. We?ve been doing that since kindergarten.?
There are the untold sacrifices, which Acey has taken on herself. If Anna wanted to accomplish all of these things, she couldn?t live the normal adolescent life.
?When there are parties going on, I just have to say no, your sleep is more important,? Acey says. ?I probably haven?t always been the most popular mom because of that.?
About a month ago, during Anna?s transition from cross country to basketball season, she felt for the first time as if she was burnt out.
?Mom,? she told Acey, ?I don?t know if I can do this another day. I feel like it?s Groundhog Day.?
Anna?s body was tired. She was hurt most of the cross country season, but she ran through it. Luckily, Mother Nature was watching over Anna. Those two snow days recharged her.
?I slept in, I didn?t stress about school,? Anna says. ?I got ready for the long basketball season.?
In eighth grade, the short girl with the huge feet started to grow into those skis. By the time Anna was done sprouting, she was a 6-foot tall player who had the skill package of a point guard.
Now, she?s the centerpiece of a talented senior class that has the Storm ranked No. 1 in The Star?s citywide big-class rankings and No. 9 in USA Today?s Midwest rankings.
Florzak is a handful for most teams because she can post up their smaller point guards and shoot over them for three. She is also quick enough to take most point guards off the dribble.
?She has the ability to drop 20 points a night,? says senior Amanda Barnard, ?but she looks for the open player first. She?s one of the most well-rounded point guards I?ve played with. We rarely get pressed because they know she?ll break it.?
Florzak?s unique combination of size and ball-handling caught the attention of many Division I programs, including Iowa State. But Florzak had heard during her junior year that Iowa State had already filled its scholarship quota for the class of 2006. She called Iowa State coach Bill Finley, who told her that was not true. Finley offered her a scholarship on the spot.
Florzak called Finley back after her junior year concluded with a loss in the state tournament.
?Coach Finley,? she said, ?if I come to play for you, can I have No. 13??
Finley said 13 was available.
?Then I?m coming to play for you,? she said, already showing her swagger.
?When they offered me a scholarship,? Florzak says, ?it was the best day of my life, the day my dream came true.?
Florzak is the only Sion athlete ever to make all-state in three different sports. The cross country team has won two state titles, and Florzak won state individually her sophomore year. Oh, and what of that AAU national tournament in Orlando last summer, the one where she met Tyler? Well, all she did was help her team, the Belles, to the national championship.
Now, all that?s left on Florzak?s agenda is winning a state title her last year at Sion with a group of seniors whom Florzak says ?have been through everything together.?
?There are seven of us seniors,? Florzak says. ?We have accomplished a lot, but there?s that one missing piece. It means so much to us.?
Florzak has never been afraid to stand out.
She?s been the team leader for the cross country team for four years. Middleton remembers an exchange before a race this season that showed her moxie.
?I was talking to the girls before the race,? Middleton says. ?I was saying we need to do this, we need to do that. Anna finally stopped me and said, ?Girls, what he?s saying is don?t screw up.? That was it. She took the words out of my mouth.?
On the hardwood, Florzak is clearly the floor general at the point, but she?s also the first to speak up when somebody isn?t performing her best. Of course, she has to remove her mouthpiece first.
?When she gets mad,? says Hillary Buren, a Sion senior forward, ?she throws her mouthpiece a lot.?
Florzak is a bit of a team psychologist. She has to figure out when the team needs a kick in the butt or a laugh.
?She?s a goofball,? Henderson says. ?The stuff she says ? We were working on our full-court press, and she said, ?I wish I was a ghost so that I could sneak up on people.? ?
Whether it?s her golden brown skin ? Buren calls her a ?tanaholic? ? or her collection of shoes that covers the entire rainbow, Florzak doesn?t hesitate to show her true colors.
?She has the brightest colored shoes,? Barnard says. ?Lime green, zebra print, hot pink. She?s not afraid to make a statement.?
As for her introduction into Hollywood culture, Florzak?s only statement is that she and Tyler are just friends. She?s had to dispel the rumors of a romance over and over again.
Still, it hasn?t stopped her from getting ribbed about it.
?That was the hot topic of conversation at the beginning of the year,? Middleton says, laughing. ?With Anna, nothing ever surprises me. You never know what?s going to happen around Anna.?
