Tara Cole has been coaching the South Hadley High Shool field hockey team for over a dozen years. During that tenure, she’s seen a number of exceptional athletes come and go. But junior Meghan Carey is one who will have a lasting impact.
“I’ve been at the helm of the South Hadley field hockey team for 16 years now and she’s an athlete who will stick out for me forever,” Cole said. “She’s a gem. You don’t get many of them like that in your coaching career, that are just the whole package.”
Carey is an exceptional athlete, and a multi-sport athlete as well. She also plays basketball and lacrosse. But she came to field hockey relatively late in her playing career, not picking up a field hockey stick until she was in the seventh grade. It was one of her older sisters, Abbie, who first played the sport, and ultimately motivated Meghan to join.
“I saw how much she enjoyed it and cared for the sport and how many friends she made off of it. So I really wanted to try it out for myself,” Carey said. “She really encouraged me to play and helped me, and I really appreciated that.”
Field hockey, as a sport, can be difficult for newcomers to pick up quickly. An extremely technical game, it requires a lot of technique and skills that can take a while to develop. Despite those difficulties, it was clear very early on that Carey was going to be something special on the pitch. Though she admits that learning the game was far from easy, only a year after she started playing, she was already playing with the high school’s junior varsity squad as an eighth grader. That same season, she wound up being called up to practice with South Hadley’s varsity team.
“Even during (her JV) season, myself and the other coaches recognized her prowess on the field and invited her to continue practicing with us when we made the postseason that year, knowing that she would never see a minute of game time because she was only an eighth grader, but recognizing how important it would be for her as a leader, future leader, the team to know what it’s like to keep playing in November,” Cole said.
It proved to be immensely helpful for Carey, who found not only a place to continue honing her skills, but teammates that welcomed the younger player with open arms.
“They were so welcoming, so supportive. Our team in general is so keen on connections and team bonding,” Carey said on joining the varsity squad. “Practicing with them and helping them get ready for that season. It really pushed me and challenged me to become better, faster, more skilled player.”
It couldn’t have been easy for Carey, joining a team full of juniors and seniors as just an eighth grader, and someone who was still learning the ins and outs of a new sport to boot. But that’s what makes Carey such a dangerous field hockey player – overcoming those difficulties is what she loves most about the sport.
“I love the challenge, I loved being challenged. Learning something new, it’s always difficult at the beginning trying to figure out the mechanics and certain skill works that you have to do,” Carey said. “But once you figure out the techniques and everything, it becomes second nature once you learn the more complicated stuff. I loved everything that involved the sport.”
As she grew older, Carey quickly rose to a leadership role with the varsity team. A natural athlete with both speed and grittiness, she also had a single-minded focus when it came to learning and developing new skills, adding more and more complicated moves to her toolbox. Her speed and tenacity were the two things that Cole said made Carey one of the most deadly players on the field, and she also pointed out that she thinks the game at an extremely high level as well.
“She has really great field vision, which you don’t often see in that caliber with as young as she is,” Cole said. “She’s less than five years playing the sport, but there’s times that she’ll come out… and she’ll talk to me about some of the things that she’s seeing on the field. Sometimes athletes come out and they say things, and coaches will take it with a grain of salt, but if Meghan tells me she’s seeing something there that I’m missing or that could change the flow of the game, it definitely stops us and we listen.”
FIRST TEAM
Samantha Brennan, junior, Holyoke
Emily DeMaio, senior, Frontier
Charlotte Hennings, junior, Smith Academy
Gabi Moroney, senior, South Hadley
Olivia Labrie, junior, Hampshire
Kaitlyn Lynes, senior, South Hadley
Abigail Olden, junior, Belchertown
Charlotte Ribe, senior, Northampton
Lila Roche, junior, Frontier
Ashley Scott, junior, South Hadley
Makena Valentine, senior, Smith Academy
SECOND TEAM
Silvia Bastek, junior, Hampshire
Isabella Cebula, junior, Belchertown
April Hurley, senior, South Hadley
Mikayla Joyner, junior, Hampshire
Alexis Katz, junior, Northampton
Caitlin MacDougall, senior, Amherst
Bailey McCoy, senior, Smith Academy
Molly O’Donnell, freshman, Holyoke
Eliza Rothstein, junior, Belchertown
Abbie Sierzego, senior, South Hadley
Hadley Szynal, junior, Smith Academy
HONORABLE MENTION
Lauren Cooper, junior, Belchertown
Maeve Huit, senior, Frontier
Lily Provost, junior, South Hadley
McKenzie Schreyer, junior, Amherst
Sarah Wojnarowski, senior, South Hadley
Elyssa Wrona, senior, Belchertown