“Fun story: I played volleyball for four years, and I loved it, but it just wasn’t my thing anymore. I love playing sports, and I wanted to play a fall sport. I had a couple of friends who played field hockey, and they said they loved it, so I just decided to go for it. I just started playing this year– we had tryouts [in August], and the season lasted until late-October, and now I’m doing it indoors.

I went to a camp over the summer [to prepare for tryouts], but it was only two days, and I was the oldest person there, by far. Most of the people who had never played before [were] younger– so like, middle school. And then there were a few high schoolers who had never played– including a couple of them being on my team. That was the first time I ever picked up a stick, and I had tryouts right after that.

I had no idea what I was doing. Usually, when you start a sport you’re pretty young; since I was a junior in high school and had never played it before, I was terrified that I would suck at it, but it turns out I don’t suck at it.

Since I was new [to field hockey], they started me on JV for most of the season. For playoffs, they pulled me up to varsity. I didn’t really think that I would play that much during the playoffs, but they ended up putting me in for almost the whole game. We won 2-0, and I scored both of those goals. That was really cool. It was a very fun experience to get to play with varsity.”

(Junior)