Cabrini Athletic DepartmentWith this year’s field hockey team being mostly freshmen, who will lead the team to victory? Captain Kate Ryan, a junior exercise science major, is a good candidate, as well as this issue’s player of the week.
Ryan made first team in the Pennsylvania Athletic Conference as a sophomore last year. Her goal is to make first team again as a junior, while guiding this year’s team to a PAC Championship.
These are high hopes Ryan has for a team so young and inexperienced in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III. The team has only six returning upper classmen, but Ryan is confident in the team’s highly recruited freshmen.
“The freshmen complement our team nicely; they are really smart players,” Ryan said.
The practices have been going strong and Ryan is impressed with how hard everyone has been working. Her favorite quote is from Mia Hamm and it emphasizes the importance of practice in a champion. “The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking.”
That type of dedication is just what they need to accomplish another team goal, which is beating Eastern University, a rival school that won the PAC last year.
“This is Eastern’s last year in the PAC and it would be awesome to beat them,” Ryan said.
Overall Ryan feels that although this year is somewhat of a transition period, the team is off to a great start. She also feels that the talent is most definitely there, but championships take more than talent, but a trust that will take some time to perfect on.
