Amanda Leslie
Five days a week, the field hockey team can be found in the stadium after school practicing behind the scoreboard. As of recent, the team has been practicing for one full week.
This year, due to the extraneous amount of girls, there are three teams.
“We had an extremely large amount of girls try out, so we decided to make three teams,” head varsity coach Katherine Fixsen said.
The size of the team is down to where it’s supposed to be this year, due to the separation into three teams.
“Ideally, you want the teams to be anywhere from 14 to 16 people, and we’ve always been over that,” Fixsen said. “We have had 18 to 19, even as high as 24 girls.”
We have a really young program this year, we only have two seniors, only six or seven juniors, all the rest are freshman and sophomore. It’s definitely a rebuilding year, however, even with that said I think it should still be really competitive; we have a lot of really athletic strong young girls this year.
The season starts quickly, with their first scrimmage on Friday 30th, against Del Norte, and several games following soon after.
“Our first official preseason game is Tuesday, September third at Otay Ranch High School against Otay,” Fixsen said. “Then our first home game is the sixth of September against Valhalla.”
As for the games, Fixsen believes the girls should beat their opponents but keeps a realistic yet positive outlook.
“We should beat Otay and Valhalla, but you just never know,” Fixsen said. “Otay is a D1 team, so they’re a division above us and they’re always very competitive. We beat Valhalla twice last year, so I expect to beat them again.”
When asked about her hopes for the team this year, Fixsen replied with an encouraging sentiment.
“I hope for the girls to grow, learn, improve, and to be competitive,” Fixsen said.
