Field Hockey Strives to Overcome Setback from Sickness

Last Saturday, Big Red field hockey faced a tough Milton Mustang squad. The young Exeter team had a successful preseason and had high hopes for its season opener, but health issues prevented the team from playing to its full potential resulting in a 4-0 loss to Milton.The campus was hit hard last week by the spread of the “hand, mouth, foot” disease and cold. Several members of the field hockey team suffered from this contagious illness including Marley Jenkins, the team’s pivotal senior captain. Jenkins was unable to play in the game at Milton, surely hurting the team's efforts.Upper Noa Siegel was disappointed with the team’s performance. “The game for the most part wasn’t our best performance.”Siegel believes that playing on grass might have alsobeen a source of error. “We were on grass again, which we’ve been sorta using as an excuse for mistakes.”She also stated, “We could have really stepped it up more because we lacked a sense of urgency for the ball and urgency to win.”However, whether it was a loss or a win, the team always has something to gain from their game experience. Siegel believes that this loss against Milton will excite a lot of the players to step up for the future games. “We’ve used the outcome of Milton though to help us get pumped up for games in the future. I think the team is tired of losing, and because of that we’ve tried to get ourselves into an intense winning-oriented mindset.”When head coach Chelsea Feole was asked about the team’s performance she emphasized her focus on the development of the players instead of the result of the matches.“With every first game of any season, it serves as a really great indicator of what we need to do. Obviously we lost so it was tough, but I think for us we grew from it, because we got to evaluate the loss. And now we know A,B,C, where to go from here now on. It really helped us in establishing a better idea of what we need to work on more moving deeper into the season.”However, she still believes that she saw some positive signs from the team’s play against the Milton Mustangs. “With Milton especially, these kids’ second half effort when these kids go really hard, they are very dangerous. We can be extremely aggressive, and really set the pace of the game. Although at Milton we didn’t get lucky with scoring a goal, but we really had sort of a momentum shifting our way by beating people to the ball, being aggressive with every possesions we’ve had.”She believes that eventually pieces will come together if the team focuses on the fundamentals. “My goal this is my first year as a coach, it is not as much about the results of every game, im trying to focus on each individual players’ skills and developing them. We have a very young team. Right now we need to focus on individual improvement. The pieces will come together. We are getting better everyday. They [players] are picking up on it so that should be good and I’ll keep focusing on fundamental skills.”The Big Red Field Hockey team faces the Cushing Penguins on the September 20th.