From the second she first picked up a field hockey stick, Abigail Olden knew it was the sport for her.
An avid athlete, Olden had always been involved in sports, participating in swimming, soccer and lacrosse. But something about field hockey hooked her in a way none of the other sports had.
“I think the initial excitement of this new sport that I never heard of and never seen anyone else play, that was really exciting,” Olden said. “So I think the excitement of trying something new that I’ve never experienced before and getting to learn in my own way rather than trying to copy other people was really great for learning and for my love for the sport.”
Olden was introduced to the sport early. When she was in the second grade, her mother, Lindsay Wright, helped start a field hockey program in Belchertown. Wright had also played field hockey when she was younger and wanted to introduce more people to it. Olden was too young to play then, but that didn’t stop her from jumping in practices with girls older than her. She grew up with the program, alongside dozens of girls who became a very tight-knit community.
“A lot of the kids in the Belchertown program, they all grew up together. So when [Abigail] was a freshman, the seniors are kids she’d been playing with since she was a little kid,” Wright said. “So it’s kind of like a family in Belchertown. All these kids grew up together playing for many, many years. So even if they’re not always on the same team, they know each other quite well.”
For a while, it was good. A fierce athlete and an even fiercer competitor, Olden picked up the game quickly, often getting called up to higher levels for practices or scrimmages if they needed more players. She proved that she belonged on the field, and rapidly honed more of her skills. Around her freshman year, those goals got bigger: playing Division I field hockey, the national team, the Olympics – she wanted to be the best.
But being the best meant forgoing other things. And that was where things started to fall apart.
“I wanted to be a star player… and then I started having to quit other sports, quit my hobbies to do field hockey full-time, going to tournaments every weekend and practices all the time. It was too much and it was not what I wanted because I couldn’t have a life,” Olden said. “I didn’t see my friends that much, I was never home, I couldn’t see my dad and my brothers who live in New York, I couldn’t see them as much because I was always on field hockey. When COVID hit and everything stopped, that break really was crucial because that’s when I decided, ‘OK, I still want to play field hockey, but I don’t want it to be my life. I want to have breaks, I want to be able to live a little bit.’”
Finding that balance was just what Olden needed, and that, combined with her incredible skillset, led to her selection as the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Field Hockey Player of the Year.
Olden led the way in Belchertown’s most successful field hockey season since the program’s inception. For the first time, the Orioles made it past the first round of the Western Mass. tournament, and Olden scored the overtime goal in a 1-0 thriller against East Longmeadow to give them their first-ever sectional title. They finished with a 12-4-1 overall record and a 10-1-1 record in the County Division, earning the conference title over Pioneer on the last day of the regular season. Olden finished with 29 goals and 12 assists to cap her senior season, accounting for roughly half of her team’s scoring. That’s in part because of her talent, says Wright, but also because of her high field hockey IQ.
“She spends a lot of hours working on individual stick skills, her drive, special shots like when she takes a reverse hit, she practices a lot of those things for many hours that she can use them easily on the field…. as well as her field awareness,” Wright said. “She does a lot of things on the field, at least this year for sure, with reading what’s happening and changing the play, which is really hard to do. I’d also say she’s developed a lot of skills under pressure situations. There’s a lot of situations where she goes up the field by herself and has to go by some people and figure out what to do independently, and that’s a lot of pressure.”
Olden isn’t done with field hockey just yet – she’s committed to play Division 3 hockey at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., choosing the program because of its family-like atmosphere — something that reminds her of the connections she’s had with her teams in Belchertown. It will be an adjustment, leaving her current squad and playing for a new coach. But she’s confident in her choice, and if her high school career is any indication, Olden will continue to thrive on the field, while making sure to balance athletics with the rest of her life.
Lauren Cooper, senior, Belchertown
Alexis Katz, senior, Northampton
Emily Lippiello, junior, Northampton
Chloe Moynihan, sophomore, Hampshire
Abigail Olden, senior, Belchertown
Lila Roche, senior, Frontier
Eliza Rothstein, senior, Belchertown
Hadley Szynal, senior, Smith Academy
Ashley Taylor, senior, Frontier
Ella Flanders, senior, Frontier
Rebecca Wallace-West, senior, Frontier
Edith Audette, freshman, Belchertown
Silvia Bastek, senior, Hampshire
Samantha Brennan, senior, Holyoke
Zoey Candito, sophomore, Amherst
Charlotte Cavanaugh, senior, Smith Academy
Mackenzie Colson, senior, Hampshire
Pearl Davis, senior, Northampton
Chloe Derby, junior, Northampton
Katie James, junior, Northampton
Catherine Kokoski, junior, Smith Academy
Maria Konieczny, senior, Amherst
Olivia Labrie, senior, Hampshire
Eleanor Andrews, sophomore, Northampton
Isabella Cebula, junior, Belchertown
Anna Cuthbert-Laidlaw, senior, Northampton
Lydia Donatellia, junior, Hampshire
Isabella Gavron, eighth grade, Smith Academy
Alexa Jagodzinski, sophomore, Smith Academy
Ava Kowalczyk, senior, Hampshire
Isabella Murphy, senior, Holyoke
Lily Provost, junior, South Hadley
Mackenzie Schreyer, senior, Amherst
Ashley Scott, senior, South Hadley
Ava Tellier, junior, Holyoke