Field-Hockey
Favorite athlete: John Mayberry Jr.
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Going to States for field hockey sophomore year.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When I tripped on nothing and fell face first during the Abington game junior year. Gabby and Stalker were cracking up behind me on defense.
Music on iPod: Hamilton
Future plans:Go to college and study Engineering.
Words to live by: "Zello"
One goal before you turn 30: Work in a lab coat.
One thing people don’t know about you:I can solve a Rubik's cube.
By Mary Jane Souder
Marykate Dugan doesn’t fit into the mold of your typical field hockey player.
Although the Council Rock North senior – affectionately known as MK - has been an important contributor to an Indian squad that earned a berth in the postseason, she is perhaps even more comfortable in her role as president of Mathletes, a group of students that competes in math competitions against other schools.
“As nerdy as it sounds, Mathletes is my favorite thing,” Dugan said. “It’s really fun and relaxed. You go to a math competition, solve a couple of problems and get food.”
Dugan has seamlessly found a way to combine her passion for academics with field hockey and has been a breath of fresh air on this year’s squad.
“She cracks jokes all the time, but they’re intellectual jokes,” coach Heather Whalin said. “She was telling physics jokes the other day. I turned around like, ‘Seriously?’
“She’s the coolest kid, and she has a contagious smile that makes everyone she comes in contact with better for just having known her.”
On the hockey field, Dugan labored in anonymity as the team’s reliable right defensive back.
“MK is someone on my team that you probably would never notice, but she was an invaluable member of the team,” Whalin said. “She never asks for any recognition, she never looks at stats.
“She just plays every moment for her teammates who she considers her sisters. She is the ‘mom’ of the team, and she is beloved by each and every player on the team. If you ask any player, teacher or student at North about Mary Kate Dugan, they would have nothing but glowing things to say about this remarkable young woman.”
Remarkable might be the perfect word to describe the senior defensive back who is ranked in the top 20 of her senior class and takes a full course load of AP classes as well as Accelerated English.
“My day is five AP classes, and I end it up with English,” Dugan said. “It’s definitely a lot of work to balance my schedule and balance the time I spend with field hockey and the time I spend doing homework and with my friends, but it’s something I’m definitely willing to work for.
Dugan is not the only high-achieving member of this year’s squad.
“We got the GPAs, and almost every single senior was at least in the top 10 percent of the class and we have three or four in the top one percent,” Whalin said.
So it’s hardly surprising that when Dugan was looking to recruit new members of Mathletes, she looked to the hockey team first. It paid dividends. Goalie Margaret D’Auria is the secretary and Claire Jarema is treasurer of Mathletes. Olivia Musto and Gabby Shepard are also part of the club.
“Some of the smartest girls I know are on the field hockey team,” said Dugan, who spends at least four hours a night on homework. “On average, I start around 6:30 after I eat dinner, and sometimes I don’t go to bed until 12:30. It depends on the night, but I enjoy doing that.”
As much as Dugan enjoys academics, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on being part of North’s field hockey squad.
“It gives me almost an identity in school, and it definitely made my high school experience more enjoyable,” she said. “Especially freshman year coming in after preseason, you already knew a bunch of upperclassmen on the field hockey team.
“More than the games, I’m going to remember funny things that happened at practice. So much of our time was spent laughing. Every practice is really enjoyable, and we always walk off the field laughing, no matter what. I’m not going to remember the scores of games.
Dugan was one of 21 aspiring hockey players that entered the program as freshmen. She is one of the 11 who stayed with the sport.
“We’re just a great group of girls,” Dugan said. “We get along so well.
“Even outside of field hockey in school, we’re all in the same friend group. We all hang out a lot outside of field hockey. We just work well together on and off the field.”
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Dugan has been playing field hockey since the summer after sixth grade.
“Through elementary school, I always played softball,” she said. “I was on a pretty competitive travel softball team.
“I was kind of getting burned out with the sport, and in sixth grade, me and all my friends decided we would go to a field hockey camp over summer and try out for the team in seventh grade.”
It was an interesting introduction for Dugan.
“At the beginning, I definitely struggled because with softball I always batted left-handed, and in field hockey, it was – ‘Oh, you can’t do that,’” she said. “The first time I was there I said, ‘Where are the left-handed sticks?’ That was definitely the most challenging thing, but I really liked it.
“Softball was a slow game, and field hockey was more intense, and I really liked that. In seventh grade, we had a team of 22 girls and a coach that had never coached before, and that’s where I met all my friends. I’m still friends with all of them.”
Dugan was part of North’s program since she was a freshman and saw some varsity time as a sophomore.
“I got pulled up when one of our players got injured and I got thrown into a couple of varsity games,” she said. “Then I got to practice with them, and by junior year, I got a decent amount of playing time, so it was really fun.”
Fun is an operative word when Dugan talks about hockey, and even when her playing time diminished during a stretch in her junior season, she never considered walking away from the sport.
“I was pretty committed,” Dugan said. “I wasn’t the type of player who was going on in college. I wasn’t playing to be a starter. I was playing because it was fun.
“There were always times when I would think – ‘Oh, maybe I won’t play next year because I’m taking really hard classes,’ but I definitely came back to it. All my friends play. It would be pretty pointless if I didn’t play.”
Whalin is certainly glad she opted to stick with it.
“She really came into her own this year,” the Indians’ coach said. “She’s always consistent. You never notice her on the field until you realize – ‘Wow, no one was able to come down the left side.’
“She’s one of those kids that’s involved in so many things that she doesn’t play in the offseason, but she’s such a hard worker that she makes up for it with her work ethic. I never have to worry if she’s ready for a game. She’s calm and she just does her job. If the ball comes in, she pushes the ball out to the side. That’s her job.”
And there’s no mistaking that Dugan understands her role.
“I have always played defense, and I always thought that was what I was better at,” she said. “In defense, I just stick to what I know.
“I don’t ever try to drive the ball because my push pass works, so I just try to perfect that instead of doing something else.”
Off the hockey field, Dugan is a member of the National Honor Society, the Spanish Honor Society and Science Honor Society. She is an officer for the school’s volunteer organization SHARE (Students Helping Area Residents Effectively).
Dugan plans to study engineering and is leaning toward chemical engineering since chemistry is one of her favorite classes. Her list of colleges includes Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel and Penn State (where her brother is enrolled).
Dugan isn’t sure what she’ll be doing in 10 years but imagines she’ll be “wanting to wear a white lab coat somewhere doing some sort of engineering.”
“MK is both a leader on and off the field, and she is headed for big things in her life,” Whalin said. “She is not just a step above other players, you need a ladder to reach just how amazing this young woman is and how much she has meant to the program this season.
“Without MK on the field this year, I do not think this team would have been as successful as we were this season.”
