Junior Gwynnie Hockey knew she wanted to play field hockey when she got the chance. Her older sister played and the majority of her friends played, so she grew up around the sport. Gwynnie started playing in seventh grade at Pembroke Hill. She transferred to SM East the second semester of freshman year when she realized East didn’t offer field hockey.
She heard around that her friends, juniors Campbell Griffin and Mady Hutsell, were thinking about starting a club, so she brought up the idea of field hockey.
“I think, being one of the first people to join, it gave me a leadership role in the club,” Hockey said. “I was also the only one in the club who knew how to play.”
Over the summer Griffin and Hutsell were thinking of ideas to get involved in the school more, and also get an extracurricular for their college resumes. They ended up choosing field hockey, even though neither of them had played. But since they both like sports and being outside, it was fitting.
“We were talking about it and thought this would be a great activity to bring to East.” Hustell said. “It’s not something you need to be good at straight off the bat, no one's expecting you to be a pro. It's just a fun way of getting involved.”
Hutsell and Griffin both worked together to find people to help get started. Hutsell reached out to her seminar teacher, Wade Pelk, to sponsor the club, and he agreed. Next, Griffin went to a field hockey club scrimmage over the summer. This is where she met coach Bron.
Griffin told him about their idea to start their own club, and he gave her his number and offered to help with practices or gear.
At their first practice last week at Indian Hill Middle School, he gave them 10 sticks and 10 balls to start with. In honor of their first practice, Hustell provided Einstein bagels for the club members as a snack to kick off the season.
At the first practice they focused on learning the rules about the sport and how to hit and pass the ball. They started off slow by passing the ball to each other and will continue to practice and grow in skill.
The club will mainly practice on Sundays, as that’s when they assume most people will be available. The practices last about an hour. They also plan to send GroupMe polls to find out when most people are available.
Hutsell and Griffin want to try to combine with Bishop Miege’s field hockey club and Pembroke Hill’s to scrimmage and practice more playing against others to grow skills and meet more people around them.
To promote their club, they created an Instagram. Here, they are gonna post videos and pictures of people at the meetings and create ads to post. They are also trying to tell as many people as possible and spreading it by word of mouth.
“We’re super excited to see where [the club] goes in the future,” Hustell said. “We hope it grows bigger and can be something many people can enjoy.”
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