Last year’s Smith Academy field hockey team was nigh impossible to stop. Loaded with 10 talented seniors, the Falcons won nine of their first 10 games last year, and made it to both the Class B Western Mass. finals against Greenfield and qualified for the state tournament.
This year, it’ll be difficult for the Falcons to soar to quite the same heights. All 10 of the seniors who graduated were starters and bona fide stars, and head coach Judy Strong knows that it’s not going to be easy to fill their shoes.
“All 10 were very, very strong players. And the only starter that we returned is Hadley Syznal in goal. So one can’t replace those 10 right away,” Strong said. “They all had been playing together, they all had experience at the varsity level. They all were leaders… I think that’s a huge, huge void.”
Strong will be leaning heavily on team co-captain Synzal in goal, as well as her other senior co-captain Charlotte Cavanaugh in the midfield. But it isn’t just the loss of the seniors that will sting this year. Smith Academy’s roster is significantly smaller, with just 12 players on the squad. All 12 will need to stay healthy and uninjured for the team to make it through the season, or else they’ll risk playing shorthanded.
“It definitely is rebuilding. I don’t want to diminish the returners coming back, but it’s going to be very hard to get through a season with the schedule we play, and with things that occur, whether it’s bumps and bruises, sicknesses, COVID is still around, with 12 people,” Strong said. “I wish we had more people because these players are going to be expected to play every minute the entire game.”
While it’ll be a significant challenge for the Falcons this season, Strong is hopeful looking ahead. She’s focused on building a strong foundation with the younger players this year, led by her few returners, and has a group of seven players who have grown up playing in Strong’s field hockey youth program who should join the team next year and boost the team’s numbers with strong fundamentals.
“This young group is only going to get better every day in practice, every game experience they have. It may be frustrating at times, but they’re going to get better,” Strong said. “(Next year), bringing in these seven youth kids that played six games last fall and now are going to play nine games this fall, now they have their youth game experience under their belt. I think the transition next year, we’ll still be young, but it’ll be a smoother one with bigger numbers.
Hampshire has started its new season off with a bang, shutting out Amherst on the road 2-0 in its first contest of the season on Thursday.
It’s a team that’s looking to improve in both the short and long term. The Raiders have a full varsity and junior varsity squad this year, and head coach Susannah Bastek is excited about all the new talent that is picking up field hockey.
“We have a lot of seniors on the team. We have seven seniors — we decided to do a smaller squad this year because we have a full JV team and a lot of new players to the sport, which is really exciting,” Bastek said. “So this squad is really small, and we were a little nervous about if people were going to be able to play the whole game but they did it.”
Last year’s Hampshire team finished 5-9-2 overall and 3-5-1 in County League play. As a result, the Raiders missed both the state tournament and the Western Mass. playoffs. This year, Bastek will look to rely on her seniors for leadership and her younger players for both depth and scoring. If she can get both, the Raiders have a shot at making a postseason appearance.
“People take different leadership roles. We have our three captains, Olivia Labrie, Mikayla Joyner and Sylvia Bastek. Silvia does the narrating of the entire game on the field, which I think is helpful and it’s really positive. Liv and Mikayla really hold down the defense strongly and it’s the younger players that are really making the power moves and scoring,” Bastek said.
Last year’s South Hadley field hockey team had a strong regular and postseason. The group finished 12-4-4, qualifying for the Class B Western Mass. tourney and making it to the Round of 16 in the Division 4 state tournament.
But there’s a lot of changes for the program this year. At the helm is first-year head coach Nicole Casolari, taking over from long-time coach Tara Cole; Brooke Marion is also serving as the varsity assistant coach this season since the school doesn’t have a junior varsity team. They’re also much younger this season; after graduating a bevy of seniors, the Tigers got a seventh and eighth-grade waiver to allow younger students to join the team to help fill out their roster.
“It’s been a learning curve for sure,” Casolari said on serving as head coach. “Tara Cole built this program to be where we left it off last season, which has been amazing to watch and experience. But I think coming into the season and following that is a lot. But with the first game under my belt, I feel more confident with the group and with what I’m doing with the team – the goal is to keep the sport alive, keep the program strong.”
In addition to the seventh and eighth graders joining the team, South Hadley has also started a co-op with PVCICS, adding four new players to their squad.
“That’s a new co-op, we’re really excited about that. I think talking to those players, they were nervous that they wouldn’t be able to continue playing the sport depending on if they could get a co-op or not. So having this co-op, I’m excited about keeping this sport alive in Western Massachusetts,” Casolari said.
There’s a good mix in South Deerfield this fall, where Frontier aims for another postseason run after reaching the MIAA Div. 4 Round of 16 in 2021.
“I think we’re capable of having a successful season,” offered Frontier coach Missy Mahar, who enters her 21st season in charge of the varsity program. “They work really well together. We’re very young, but a lot of those younger players have come up together through the system.”
The Redhawks will rely on three senior captains — Ella Flanders, Lila Roche and Rebecca Wallace-West — to anchor a club that is looking to infuse a healthy dose of eighth and ninth graders. Flanders is back for another season as the team’s starting goalie, while Roche does it all in the center of the midfield. Wallace-West has been one of the team’s top scorers the past few seasons.
Sophomore Claire Kirkendall is a key returning player who will help guide the defensive unit. Sophomore Kyra Richards is the team’s backup goalie.
“We have some great senior leadership to mix in with the younger players,” Mahar said.
Freshman Macy DeMaio (forward) and eighth graders Harper Modestow (midfield), Stella Heflin (forward) and Rowan Reilly (forward) are all expected to make immediate impacts for Frontier.
Last year wasn’t exactly the season that Northampton was hoping for. The Blue Devils stumbled through the season with a 5-10-2 record, opening the campaign with a five-game losing streak where they were outscored 26-4. This year, second-year head coach Meshia Begin believes that things will be different for ’Hamp.
“Northampton may be the dark horse of the league. We have a fast and experienced team this year out of the gate,” Begin said. “Last season we were delayed due to COVID, but caught up to the league mid-season with our rematches.”
The Blue Devils will rely on seven returning seniors to anchor their comeback effort this year, and so far Northampton is already off to a better start. The Blue Devils dispatched Mohawk Trail 2-0 in their opening contest, peppering Mohawk Trail’s keeper with 17 shots total in the win. Senior forwards Chloe Gawle, Katie Sledzieski and Pearl Davis, midfielders and forwards Izzy Epstein and Anna Cuthbert-Laidlaw, and defenders Lexi Katz and Emma Cunningham will be the leadership group propelling Northampton forward this year.
“With a strong senior class, we’re looking to bring our experience together to build a smart and aggressive approach this season,” Begin said. “We left the second half of the 2021 season with strong defense which allowed us to be competitive within our league. We expect to score more this season and strengthen our offensive attacks and midfield transitions.”
This will be a foundational year for Amherst, which is building back its field hockey program after losing a couple of years of development to the COVID-19 pandemic. Head coach Sarah Hafale Bugbee is focused on progression.
“We’re definitely a young program. We have a lot of freshmen. We’ve got some middle schoolers here, I think like everyone coming out of a few years of COVID, it’s just re-building up a program. We’ve got a lot of girls who came out for the first time, never touched a stick, and they’re playing 60 minutes of this game,” Hafale Bugbee said. “I think we have a lot of heart. We’re committed and we’ve got a long way to go. But we’re building back up.”
Seniors Maria Konieczny, Jenna Schilling and McKenzie Schreyer will serve as the backbone for the team as they help the younger players get up to speed.
“They’re a huge part of of building back up this culture and simultaneously trying to have a fun, exciting senior year and teach girls while playing,” Hafale Bugbee said. “It’s a huge task, and I think they’re up to it.”
Belchertown has eyes on a County League title this fall, and things certainly looked promising during Friday’s opener. The club blanked defending Class C champion Franklin Tech, 4-0.
It’s a veteran team, with senior Eliza Rothstein setting the tone between the pipes at goalie. She made six saves to pick up the shutout on Friday.
Offensively, the Orioles will aim to spread the wealth around. In Friday’s win, four different players tallied: Abigail Olden, Brooke Stelmokas, Edith Audette and Mya Philpott.