Field-Hockey
Favorite athlete: Kerri Walsh Jennings
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the U19 National Club Championship with my club team this past summer.
Music on iPod: Just about everything!
Future plans: Get my degree in business and marketing at Boston College. Hopefully move into the city with friends!
Words to live by: “Live in the moment.”
One goal before turning 30: Graduated from college and traveling as much as I can.
One thing people don’t know about me: I raised three puppies for the Seeing Eye Puppy Raising Program.
By Mary Jane Souder
Caroline McGovern can create magic on the hockey field.
And in a sport where goals are hard to come by, the Council Rock South senior has made scoring goals look easy, finishing a stellar high school career with 102 goals and setting the bar high for aspiring young hockey players in Lower Bucks County and beyond.
“Caroline has been an inspiration for the program and to all the younger players in the area,” coach Lisa Belz said. “She comes up big when you need her to, and those players are hard to come by.”
McGovern’s star shown brightly during a senior season that saw her break the 36-year-old Lower Bucks single season record of 38 goals set by Monica Mills of Neshaminy in 1980.
If players are defined by their performances in big moments, McGovern is at the head of the class. In both of Rock South’s games against a Neshaminy team that captured the 2015 SOL National Conference crown, McGovern scored the game winner in overtime. She was the very definition of clutch in the second meeting between the neighboring rivals with the conference title on the line, scoring her second goal of the game during corner play to propel the Hawks to a 2-1 win. McGovern’s game winner not only clinched sole possession of the conference title but was the 100th goal of an unparalleled career.
“She’s got a book of moves,” Belz said. “Where most high school girls have a go-to pull, and they have three or four moves, I’d say Caroline has 10-plus.
“She can read the defense – once she goes up against somebody, she knows what they’re going to do, and she can figure out what kind of move she’s going to do.”
It took Belz no time at all to recognize that McGovern was a special talent.
“We play in an indoor league in the winter, and Caroline was on the seventh grade team,” the Golden Hawks’ coach said. “Her skills were above and beyond most of the high school players, let alone any seventh grader. She just had very excellent skills.”
It wasn’t long before McGovern found herself doing double duty at the indoor facility, playing with her middle school team and then seeing action with the jayvee.
Playing with and against older players was nothing new to McGovern, who got her first taste of life on the club circuit as an eight-year-old playing on a Mystx U14 team. She spent much of her career playing up an age group or two.
“As I got older, the girls were two years older than me, three years older than me,” McGovern said. “We were all really close, and we’re still close. I talk to them all the time. It was so great. Even when we lost, it was still fun.”
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Sports have always been a part of McGovern’s life with field hockey entering the picture when she was five years old.
“I played basketball, soccer, lacrosse and field hockey,” she said. “I swam in the summer, I ran track. I did everything.”
By the time she arrived at high school, McGovern had narrowed her sports down to hockey and lacrosse.
“For field hockey, even when I was little, I looked forward to every practice,” McGovern said. “I always knew if I was to go to college for a sport, this is what I enjoy most.
“I think it’s the girls that surrounded me at Mystx and my coaches. Coming up through high school and watching my sisters and how good of an experience they had – that made a huge difference for me. Also being surrounded by people who enjoyed it as much as I did.”
McGovern switched from Mystx to her present Princeton Field Hockey Club the spring of her sophomore year.
“I grew up with Mystx and I learned so much there,” she said. “Mystx has a lot of indoor training, which is really good, and I gained a lot of skills, but there was more of an opportunity to play outdoors at Princeton.
“Kristen Holmes, who coached at Princeton University, was training me, and I was surrounded by girls like Sammy Popper, Julianna Tornetta and Maddie Morano. – unbelievable girls that are on the national team. Just to have the opportunity to train with girls like that on Astroturf, I felt like I was improving in all aspects.”
McGovern earned first team all-state honors as a sophomore and junior – with this year’s selection all but a certainty as well. In 2014, she earned a spot on the Junior Indoor National team and is a member of the U.S. U-19 Women’s Indoor National Team. She is currently in trials for the U19 (outdoor) National team with one more tryout to go.
This past summer, McGovern’s Princeton squad captured the prestigious U19 National Club Championship, qualifying by winning a regional tournament and then knocking off defending national champion WC Eagles 2-1 in the title game.
“We went in as the underdogs because WC hasn’t lost a game in god knows how long,” McGovern said. “They have all these phenomenal players. It was unreal.”
McGovern is the undeniabe standard bearer for her sport at Rock South.
“As she got older, Caroline started to give back,” Belz said. “She would always pull younger kids aside and help them.
“She would go up to the turf all the time, and she’d say, ‘Does anyone want to go up with me?’ A group would go up. She would try and teach them more advanced skills that we don’t necessarily teach. She would tell the girls to watch college games on the live streaming. She had so much more experience, and she could bring so much more to the team and the program. She always had another perspective, and that was interesting for the coaching staff and players.”
The two-year captain understands the importance of giving back.
“We go to the middle schools once a year, and we practice with them,” McGovern said. “I love doing that.
“I just remember coming in freshman year and seeing girls like Kristin Donohue, Katie Bagdon - these girls were the ones I looked up to. I always had girls I looked up to and thought ‘Wow, I want to be just like them.’”
Now there are undoubtedly plenty of youngsters wanting to be “just like Caroline McGovern.”
“For somebody to come through the program and hold every record that our school has – most points, most goals, tied for assists and this year reach the 100th goal mark, not many players do that,” Belz said. “Then to go and beat the 36-year-old record is just a huge accomplishment.”
McGovern’s success on the field translated to success for her high school squad that not only won the conference championship but also earned the program’s first trip to the state tournament since 2004.
“Just having that experience with the girls on my team who I’m really close with – it was unreal,” McGovern said. “Having my coaches and even my assistant coaches like (Colette) Paprocki, Maria (Karidas) and Sam (Facciolla) – they all played in the same period when South was winning league titles, and going to states and having that experience with all these alumni – it was just unreal.
“The way it ended (a 2-0 loss to eventual state runner-up Palmyra) – there obviously was the goal of winning states. That’s everybody’s goal, but having the opportunity to even go to the tournament was just unreal. Yes, I’m sad it’s over, but this was a great way to end.
“I really do hope the freshmen see how successful – not only the seniors – but the program has become and are excited for their season and say, ‘I’m going to work just as hard as they did to get where we are.’ We really had to push ourselves to beat the teams that we did, to get the records that we did. I really hope the freshmen look at all of us like that.”
McGovern has accepted a field hockey scholarship to continue her career at Boston College, following in the footsteps of older sister Kaitlin, who played there 11 years ago. She plans to major in business and marketing.
Off the hockey field, McGovern is a member of Rho Kappa Honors Society and English Honors Society. She is a committee member for her school’s Thon, and she raises puppies for the Seeing Eye puppy-raising program.
She has played two sports each of her three preceding years in high school – hockey and lacrosse as a freshman and sophomore and hockey and basketball as a junior. McGovern has not ruled out the possibility of play lacrosse this spring
“She’s very well liked,” Belz said. “She’s able to turn it on and be very serious, but she has a playful side. She has a great personality.”
