Monday, September 8, 2014

Varsity Field Hockey Hosts Successful Play Day

By Erinn Ravosa

This past Saturday, September 6th, the Darien High School Varsity Field Hockey team hosted a play day on the stadium turf. Participating varsity field hockey teams were Greenwich Academy, The Hotchkiss School, and The Taft School. Each team was supposed to play three twenty-five minute scrimmages, but the storm Saturday afternoon unfortunately caused a game cancellation for both Hotchkiss and Taft. Although the day was cut short, the Wave’s scrimmages were luckily unaffected – for the most part – by the weather.

In the first game played, the Wave took on Greenwich Academy. The two teams had already faced off in Greenwich earlier that week, so they both knew what to expect going into the scrimmage. Darien played strong for the entire twenty-five minutes; the defense kept their opponents out of the circle while the offense pressured GA’s goalie. But even with this pressure, GA was able to keep the Wave from scoring. The end result was a tie, 0-0.
The next scrimmage the Wave had was versus Taft. Unlike the game against GA, the Wave was able to score a goal within the first minute of the referee’s whistle. Four more goals soon followed, making the end score 5-0.

The third and final scrimmage for the Wave was versus Hotchkiss, the Wave’s strongest competitor at the play day. Despite this challenge, Darien was able to enter the scoreboard first with a goal just under the ten minute mark. Seconds after the goal was scored, lightening was spotted and both teams were ushered into the school as a precautionary measure.

After twenty minutes of sitting huddled together in the hallway, Hotchkiss and the Blue Wave returned to the field to continue playing. Five minutes into this section of the game, Hotchkiss was awarded a corner due to a penalty on the Wave that took place in the circle. The corner team for Hotchkiss was able to slip the ball to the stroke mark, where another player received it and took a shot. The ball flew into the corner of the goal cage, resulting in a 1-1 score.  After a few minutes of continued play, lightening was seen again above the stadium turf. Because the game only had seconds left, the referees called time and dismissed all teams from the play day, as it was quite obvious at this point that the weather was picking up. Although the play day ended abruptly, the Blue Wave players were happy to have gotten in all of their scrimmages.
   
As its season picks up, the team looks forward to greatly improving and strengthening its game. When asked for comment about the future season, senior Kyra Fitzpatrick said, “This season is definitely a rebuilding year but there is a great amount of depth within the team and Mo is pushing us to make us our best.”


This Wednesday, September 10th, the team starts its season off with a game versus Ridgefield. Come support them at 4:00pm on the stadium!
The team bonded at a team camp over the summer

No comments: