The Souderton field hockey team – led by a senior class committed to winning - rolled to the SOL Continental title and earned a berth in the PIAA 3A State Tournament. (Article sponsored by Souderton Field Hockey. Photos provided by Souderton field hockey.)
Dennis Stanton walked by a group of seniors during a late season field hockey practice.
“That’s a great group right there,” the Souderton athletic director said, nodding in the direction of the seniors. “They’ve won a lot of games.”
That might well be an understatement. The Indians rolled to a 16-0 record and the SOL Continental Conference title and have 20 wins heading into the state tournament. During the four years the seniors have been part of the program, Souderton has 61 wins – which includes a six-win abbreviated COVID-19 season in 2020.
But wins and a share of two conference titles are just a small part of the story of this year’s seniors, who are a rare and special breed.
The seniors had high goals entering their final high school hockey season, which is hardly big news, but the steps they took to ensure they’d reach their goals – that’s the news.
Prior to the start of the season, they met at Reiley Knize’s house to figure out a way to make those goals a reality.
“We came with our notes – we all had our own expectations of what this season should look like,” senior Lauren Kenah said. “We set the expectations of what we wanted as a senior class.”
They created a list, but that was just the beginning.
“We decided one day after preseason we were going to host a meeting in the school LGI,” Kenah said. “We’re like, ‘Guys, as a senior class, we have huge expectations. We want to go out with a championship winning season, we want to score goals, we want to have an awesome season. As a senior class, that’s our mentality, and we expect the team to have the same mentality as us.’ We got the white board, and we wrote down all of our expectations.”
The response of the underclassmen?
“They were laughing, they could not take it seriously,” senior Tegan Farina said. “I finally said, ‘Guys, it’s not funny, we’re actually winning this year.’”
“No other senior class had ever done it,” Kenah said. “So when we got up there – we’re all friends with everyone, and we said, ‘We’re serious. These are the expectations for the season.’”
There may have been some laughter – after all, the senior-led meeting was certainly not part of the usual preseason routine, but the underclassmen bought in. In a big way.
“I knew this year they would be running the team with that kind of mentality,” junior Ava Shaw said. “I loved it. It just made us feel like a team. I thought it was super great. I’ve been with these seniors since middle school, and they have been the group I’ve looked up to all my years. I love them all so much.”
The Mission
“A team is only as good as the sum of its parts.”
“This year’s Souderton field hockey team will strive to be the absolute best team we can be. Our team mentality will be and will continue to be a championship mentality. Push yourself to be a great athlete as well as support your teammates throughout the journey.”
The heading at the top of the seniors’ handout summed up the team’s mission.
“I spent hours printing out papers with quotes,” Farina said. “Coach Sue (Casciato) said, ‘A team is only as good as the sum of its parts’ during our preseason games, and we were like, ‘Okay, that’s what’s going to happen.’”
The handout also listed the themes for each game day.
“One day we would dress up, one day we’d wear Hawaiian, one day we’d wear our skirts, one day it was a pink out,” senior Katie Dalton said. “It really encouraged team spirit.”
“Even if I didn’t want to wear a lot of pink, seeing everyone else, I was like, ‘I guess I’ll join the pile,’” Farina said.
The seniors also came up with a new cheer for their team huddles.
“I think my favorite part was our first game against Archbishop Carroll – Lauren said, ‘Okay, we have a new cheer,’ and everyone started screaming a bunch of different things, and Lauren’s like, ‘No, only one person says it in the huddle and then we all cheer.’ We had to figure it out, there were some kinks.”
Knize wasn’t kidding when she said, “There’s a lot behind the Souderton field hockey team.”
“There’s a lot of texts, a lot of team dinners,” Dalton said. “We have all four grades on the field at once. It did take time to get to know one another, but it just clicked.”
The Games
The Indians – led by the seniors – didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk.
“For me personally, I came off of practicing with varsity for three years, and I was trembling when I saw the schedule,” Farina said. “I was like, ‘I cannot fill the last goalie’s shoes. I was terrified.
“I think the biggest thing for myself to reach my own potential was Coach Sue – ‘She said to me, ‘I believe that you can fill those shoes.’ I put my trust into every single person in front of me. I think everyone put their trust in me, and even when we made mistakes because it’s inevitable – we’re not perfect as much as we would like to be – everyone trusts each other out there.’”
For Knize, committed the Bloomsburg to play lacrosse, field hockey could have been just her ‘other sport.’ It was much more than that.
“Obviously, after my sophomore year playing with Courtney (Kenah) and Anna (Gwiazdzinski) on the front line, I knew this year it wasn’t going to be as easy to score as it was when Lauren was behind me passing me the ball, and Courtney and Anna were there to get me an assist,” Knize said. “I was like, ‘This year I’m actually going to have to stay after practice and work on how to be able to score.’
“This might not be the sport I’m going to college for, but this sport means something to me. I want to be better at it even though it’s my last year of playing hockey.”
Knize and Kenah, both captains, regularly stayed after practice to get some extra work
“I feel like it kind of set the precedent on the team,” Kenah said. “Us staying after getting extra reps, getting extra touches on the ball, there was a drive for us to want to work after hours.
“I remember one game I hit it to (freshman) Ava Jones and she got a touch on it, and the night before we stayed after practice to work on that specifically. It was awesome because it showed a direct reflection of it paying off to us getting those extra touches.”
The team’s commitment paid dividends in a 17-1 regular season record. The Indians lost their second game of the season – a 2-1 non-league loss to Methacton – and then did not lose again until their 3-1 loss to Garnet Valley in a District One 6a quarterfinal game they dominated. The loss that snapped an 18-game winning streak, but they rebounded to win the next two to earn a coveted berth in the PIAA 6A State Tournament.
Behind the scenes
The players carry their work ethic off the field.
Stanton recalled the day he was seated at the scorer’s table in the stadium, and Kenah asked him for a white board.
“That day, we had a tiny projector, and we were watching the North Penn film in the team room,” Farina said.
“Before every huge game, we’d always have a team meeting,” Dalton said. “We’d get together and say, ‘This is our goal for the game, and this is what we’re going to work on as a team.’”
“Coach Sue or I would find some film on the other team, and I would send it on the group text and everyone would log in,” Kenah said.
Farina sent her teammates her log-in information.
“Then we’d come to practice with our list of notes,” Knize said. “And everyone would share what they saw about the team we were going to play and what they noticed
“Something that helped us a lot was Coach Sue telling us not to get ahead of ourselves and saying – take it one game at a time.”
That approach turned out to be an effective one as the wins kept accumulating.
“Obviously, winning games has helped keep us in a good mood, but even practices that are not as fun as others, we still try to stay positive and we encourage others,” Dalton said. “I think everyone is always optimistic about the next game and moving forward.
“We went into every single game thinking it was the biggest game of the season, and I think that helped too with our mentality throughout the game, and we didn’t let down. We’d been looking toward this season for three years. We got together and said, ‘What can we do to make this the best season possible?’ We wanted to set a goal, set leadership for the next grades to come after us.”
“I think the reason we did so well was because everyone wanted to be here,” Knize said. “Everyone comes to practice excited. We listen to our music, we’re ready to go, we’re ready to go to the next game and win.”
Although they have 10 seniors on the roster, the Indians starting lineup includes a lot of key underclassmen.
“With so many seniors who have known each other and gone to school together, we said, ‘We have to be open, we need to invite everyone in and welcome everyone and have them relax and feel comfortable around us,’” Dalton said.
“It was important that we came together,” Kenah said. “We knew we had the potential. I feel as a senior class we did a good job of doing that and getting everyone together.”
Added Knize,” Having so many young people that are so good, you have to bring them out of their shell, you have to make sure they’re good with the team and make sure they’re happy where they are.”
Cascaiato knew coming into the season this year’s team had potential, and the seniors made sure that potential was realized.
“They took it upon themselves to do extra work,” the Indians coach said. “Lots of times I’ll be like – ‘I think we need to have a team dinner’ or ‘Why don’t you guys get together and do some team bonding.’ They’ll say, ‘We already have it covered.’
“The other day they didn’t have school, but we had a game, and I said, ‘I’m really not comfortable. The days we don’t have school we usually don’t play very well. I think you need to get together and do something.’ They said, ‘We already have brunch planned.’
“There’s a lot of kids that play a lot of hockey. A lot of them play together, and we know each other pretty well.”
On Tuesday, the Indians will be the underdog when they take on an Emmaus squad that is the defending state champion and playing for its 14th state title. Whatever the outcome, it’s been a magical and memorable season, and it didn’t just happen. It required an extraordinary commitment from a special group of seniors – Kenah, Farina, Dalton, Knize, Grace DeMarzio, Lauren Hallman, Ella Haslam, Caiden Reimel, Emily Santone and Ava Vicoli.
“We wanted to have an awesome season, and I think we put in the work to have an awesome season,” Kenah said. “We did it ahead of time. We knew what we wanted to do – we wanted to go out with a bang, and I think that’s what we’re doing.”
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