Field Hockey Flip Their Luck, Win Two in a Row

In sports, patience is key to a team’s success. Sometimes, the team will lose. Sometimes, players won’t score the goals that they should score. But if the players pay their dues, practice hard everyday, run faster everyday, sweat more everyday, success will follow.The Big Red field hockey team’s season is about redemption. Suffering from seven scoreless losses early on in the season, the team’s future seemed bleak. Everyone said “It’s a young team, they are supposed to lose.”

Despite low expectations from the community, the young squad is not letting other people set the path for themselves.

Despite low expectations from the community, the young squad is not letting other people set the path for themselves. The team is currently riding on a three game win streak, something that the team hasn’t been able to enjoy earlier on in the season.Senior captain Marley Jenkins believe that this game was a confidence booster for everyone on the team. “We played a weaker team and were able to score three goals, which was a big confidence booster for the team. Since then, we have won every game. I feel like we opened the floodgates when we scored for the first time,” Jenkins said.She also stated that because of the lack of experience of the team, scoring has been a major problem. “We had a hard time scoring. We had a younger team who was new to the sport and it took us a long time to be able to score.”Upper Noa Siegel believes that the team has suffered some losses from the inability to score. “Our main struggle was scoring. We could play really well and just not finish which was super frustrating.”However, she believes that the three game winning streak that Exeter is riding served as a morale boost to the team. “I think we just needed that initial push to bring team morale up, so it's not that we had a huge change in our playing it's more that we just stepped up to our potential,” Siegel said.She added, “We've just been really pumped and we've had faith in ourselves which proves to make a huge difference.”Jenkins mentioned that the team is able to play more offensively after the recent victories. “We've been more aggressive offensively and have changed our starting lineup to try and generate more goals. We are also using the defense more to help push the ball up the field quickly.”Eight games remain in the season and the team hopes to keep the streak alive. “We plan to keep winning! We also plan to keep up our intensity and our game oriented mind set,” Siegel said.Jenkins also hopes to keep scoring as well as winning. “We're on a three game winning streak so we're definitely looking to keep winning. But I think a big goal is to keep scoring each game to keep the team’s confidence up.”The Big Red Squad faces Brooks this upcoming Saturday.