Audrey Thurston
The lessons Audrey has learned from field hockey are applied in every aspect of her life.
Senior Audrey Thurston is busy in every aspect of her life, all year round.
In the fall, along with the homework that comes with the start of the school year, she spends the majority of her free time practicing for field hockey. When that season ends and the leaves drop from the trees, her time is then spent at the bowling alley, contributing her skills to the school’s team. And throughout the entire year, her spare seconds are spent refining her aptitude for playing the violin.
Though Audrey’s days are tightly scheduled between all of her extracurriculars, she admits her favoritism towards field hockey. However, her athletic interest isn’t what drew her to the sport initially.
“My parents are what got me into it,” Audrey said. “They found out about it through a friend and told me I should do it. I thought about how I don’t know many people in high school, and this could be a great opportunity to make friends.”
Her involvement in the sport since her freshman year not only gave her a head start on acclimatizing herself to the larger workload that comes with the transition from middle school to high school, but it also gave her the upper hand in adjusting to the social life in a bigger building. Getting in the habit of seeing the same people on her team for practices four days a week and games on the weekends provided her with the opportunity to familiarize herself with some of her peers outside of a working environment.
So, on top of making friends outside of just the classroom, these social skills are also aiding in the way the actual game is played.
“In field hockey, you have to rely on [your teammates] more,” Audrey said, “so you have to understand them and how they play. You have to trust the people around you, and being friends with them really helps with that. It’s not like you can go off and do your own thing in the game. You need to have good communication between you and your teammates. If you don’t, it makes things messy, and everything can go awry really fast.”
On the other hand, her experience on the bowling team has been quite different. With field hockey, having multiple people on the turf collaborating about the best way to thrive is the whole point of the game. But bowling takes a much more independent approach. Nobody’s in the alley at the same time, and everyone is playing separately, pressuring Audrey to strategize on her own. Plus, with field hockey being a more active performance, it compels her to be more focused on the task at hand.
“Bowling is fun, but it’s a lot of sitting around and waiting,” Audrey said. “Field hockey is more athletic in a way; you’re moving around more, and the adrenaline rush you get from it is a lot more fun and interesting. It’s a lot less mentally taxing than having to sit around all the time.”
Audrey finds it easier to be actively contributing to a teamwork-based event than to have the free time in between turns to overthink her game plans. But, she acknowledges that in any sport the key factor to success is working with the rest of the team to communicate in an effective manner—something which all of her extracurriculars have taught her to accomplish.
More than that, there are things that field hockey in particular has demonstrated that apply to her life after the whistle blows and she sheds her jersey. The health benefits of being so active and the camaraderie between everyone she plays with are lessons she continues to apply in her everyday life.
“It’s definitely taught me to take better care of myself and eat properly,” Audrey said, “but also how to make friends and the things I should be doing to maintain those relationships while continuing to do everything else in my schedule. Managing everything can be difficult. I just try to get my stuff done at school before I go home, but when I do have a lot of work outside of school, I have to stay up late to finish everything. Staying on top of things is [really important] because once I get behind, things just start piling on my workload.”
While she insists that field hockey is a fairly stress-free sport that provides its players an environment for encouragement and growth, there still is work to be put into the game. However, the advancements she’s seen in her social life due to her involvement have made the whole experience worth it. Audrey looks forward to participating much more than she used to because she knows it’s an opportunity to spend time with her friends. Whether it be during team dinners or group drills, she’s always around people she enjoys.
“We have practices around four nights a week,” Audrey said, “and they start off with running and stretches. Then, we run through drills, and towards the end, we’ll usually have a scrimmage. When I first started going to practices, it felt like a chore, but then I started to get to know people and it became fun and interesting. Games felt more serious and putting in the effort to get better felt [like a bigger deal].”