Captain Shea Freda ’24 escapes Milton opponents.
Saturday 10/7 – Andover: 8 Choate: 1
Wednesday 10/11 – Andover: 6 Milton: 0
Andover Girls Field Hockey dominated Choate on Saturday despite conceding its first goal of the season. The team still reigns undefeated after beating Milton Academy on Wednesday. The team’s current record is 8-0.
The team ended halftime with a 5-1 lead, directly after a stagnant period and a swift penalty shot by Choate. The team was not disheartened. Ava Murphy ’24 noted that the team responded to the goal with fervor, leading to the ultimate victory. She shared some of her logic and mental strength when playing, and in this game, getting scored on.
“Immediately, a lot of people had thought we would respond to a goal [and think that] we won’t be able to win it back, or we will be in total shock. But I think that’s the opposite of what we did. We actually racked up three more goals right after that,” said Murphy.
Murphy also spoke of a ‘so what?’ mentality. The team refused to back down from a tough play. Instead, it chose to use that situation to its advantage and renew its strength instead of fixating on its mistakes.
Murphy said, “I shouted to the team, I was like, like, ‘So what?’ That’s my big motto: ‘So what?’ If you have a bad play, win it back next play. I usually say, ‘Next play or so what?’ And I really think that’s really important because you should not be defined by your mistakes. And if you’re defined by your mistakes, you’re held back by fear.”
The team also saw success in both offensive and defensive tactics that they had focused on in practice and that they will continue to work on. Meg Stineman ’25 spoke on switching the ball from one side of the field to the other, as well as using defensive strategies to stop the player with the ball more effectively.
“Coming out of the game, we’ve focused a lot on, number one, transferring, which we definitely succeeded in. And then also we were focused on double teaming defensively, which we probably could have done more on in the game, but we’re still working on, [as well as] our defensive positioning and organization throughout the whole field,” said Stineman.
The team competed with the class and respect that the Andover community strives for on and off the field. Towards the end of the game, Murphy said that the level of play became increasingly elevated, but the team stayed calm and competed to their consistently high level.
“[For] the rest of the game, we really turned on the jets and we really stuck to our Andover Field Hockey. Even though the game became very chippy and the refs were not calling in our favor, we definitely just took a deep breath… We didn’t respond to the chirping and the chippiness of the other team. We didn’t let it get to us and we won by that too, not just on the scoreboard,” said Murphy.
Autumn Christian ’27 reflected on the team’s ambitions going into playing Milton. The team focused on moving the ball out of the defense and up the field, as well as offensively pressuring Milton, which were both takeaways from their game against Choate. Coming out of the game, the team strives to hone its fundamental skills.
“We worked on trying to get the ball on our defense out quick[ly]. As soon as the ball entered [our] defense side in the circle, our goal was to try to get it out as quickly as we [could]. And we did pretty well at that. We also did pretty well at pressing when they had the ball on their free possessions to try to get the ball back…. [We want to] just work on the fundamentals, just going back to like what we can do to better ourselves and then to better the team, and I think just reflecting and then pursuing and trying to fix the little details that come together to make a big deal,” said Christian.
Girls Varsity Field Hockey will play at St. Paul’s School on Saturday.
