Moxie Looks Strong in Season Opening Tourney

Sun and good fortune shone down on Exeter’s varsity field hockey team on Saturday as they participated in their first event of the season, a multi-school jamboree with Brooks School and Nobles Academy. The girls won one game, lost another and tied two more. With a new coaching staff and many new members on the team, Big Red started off the season with a strong showing.Senior captain Hannah Wellington was happy that the team meshed well together, especially so early in the season.“We have a lot of new girls, so it was good to see where they fit in with the team and our team chemistry,” she said. “Usually it takes a while to get a sense of where everyone likes to play on the field and their playing styles, but we all worked together really well.”Because the girls played a total of four games, the jamboree also gave the players and coaches multiple opportunities to assess the team’s strengths and weaknesses.“The team seems to be pretty strong, especially in the midfield,” upper Kimberly Dawes said. “We have been able to carry the ball up the field really well, and we have been making some great passes that will really help us score goals in future games. I’m amazed at how awesome our defense is, especially since we only have four players for backs.”“[The games] definitely showed us our weak spots and our strong spots,” Dawes added. “At our first practice after the jamboree, we talked about the pros and cons, and have been doing drills to improve our playing.”In addition to the new girls who recently joined the team, Moxie has a brand new coaching staff this year: head coach Samantha Carr and assistant coaches Liz Hurley and Melissa Pacific.Wellington was confident that these changes would help the team throughout the season and push the girls to do their best.“Our new coaches are all really experienced athletes and really understand the game,” she said. “We have very intense practices that help us to prepare for the games, so I don’t think we are ever going to get overwhelmed or arrive at a game unprepared like we did last season. We want to win and our coaches are really supportive and want us to win too.”Carr said that she is excited to be a part of the field hockey program and to work with the athletes.“I demand a lot from the girls, but I think they enjoy that, and they want that,” Carr said. “All I want to do is have them play at the highest level they can.”Moxie looks to improve on their 9-5-3 2012 season with a win over Groton tomorrow. The girls fell to Groton, 1-2, last year and will look to avenge their loss at Phelps Stadium and officially get their season off to a 1-0 start.Exeter’s boys varsity squash suffered a bitter 1-6 loss against Noble & Greenough School on Saturday. This was a complete turnaround from last year’s match against Nobles, when Exeter won 7-0.  Senior co-captain Hoony Lee was the only winner in the varsity matches, winning 3-0.The team captains attributed this loss to a lack of belief that the players had in themselves to win their matches. “We needed to believe that we could win, not about how much higher they’re ranked above us or how our teammates did,” Lee said. “However, I think the fact that Nobles is ranked above us really got into a lot of our players’ heads.”His co-captain Kelvin Lee agreed.  “A lot of us were not as confident as we should have been walking onto the court, which led us to not play as well as we could have,” he said.At a team meeting directly following the match, head coach Fred Brussels told the players what Harvard tennis coach Dave Fish says to his players at the start of every college tennis season: that when the players are at the tennis courts, they should only be thinking about tennis and not about academics, and that when they are in classes, they should be focusing on academics.Hoony Lee agrees. “We need to be more devoted,” he said. “Of course Exeter is an academic institution, and so our focus should be academics. However, as our coach said, when we are at the squash courts, we should really focus on nothing but squash.”According to Lee, there was not much effort from players in practices these past few days because of midterms and the flu.  “This lack of effort during practices really showed up in today’s match,” he said. “Players should really take practices, even warm-ups, seriously.”Exeter’s next match will be against Andover at home on Wednesday. Regarding this rivalry match, players were optimistic.  “I think that for the next match, we need to go into the match believing that we can win, because I definitely think that we are better than Andover,” Kelvin Lee said.Lower Louie Feingold, a player on JV, is confident in their chances in these big matches. “I think people will be ready to take on Andover. It is true that the team hasn’t been at their best but with the defeat yesterday, I think that players will start getting better as they prepare for Andover.”Hoony Lee also remained optimistic about the potential of the team’s remaining season. “It is just that recently we have been having a bit of trouble taking advantage of our fitness and skill during matches, and if we can do this, I think that we will be able to do just fine,” he said.  “We need to continue working hard during practices but also do a better job of relating what we do during practice to matches.”