The close clan of the KSU women’s field hockey team works and plays together all year

Story by Meghan Moravcik
Photos by Sarah Thompson

Orange, yellow and white balls dot the turf.

It’s early. The balls blend together and look like candy corn.

Maintenance workers are still vacuuming the turf. The lights in the field house drone. Elderly couples and friends walk the track around the field for early morning exercise.

And at 6:50 a.m., the women’s field hockey team is running back and forth across the field.

They don’t talk to each other. They don’t even look at each other. At least not until they wake up.

They’re getting warmed up for their individual training sessions. About four or five attend a one-hour session every morning to work on skills for their specific team position. This is part of their off-season training routine.

The women’s field hockey season is in the fall, but they train and practice all year. During season, they practice three to five days a week and typically play two games on the weekend. They watch videos of themselves to improve on techniques and videos of opponents to find weaknesses.

During the off-season, training continues, beginning with two weeks of conditioning where they run and lift weights from 7 to 9 a.m.

“The girls have to come back in decent shape after break,” head coach Kerry DeVries says.

Over the summer no practice is required, but DeVries recommends they to go to various summer camps.

“Our coach runs a camp for younger girls, so she encourages us to work at that,” sophomore Becky Rahaim says.

All their hard work does pay off though. Last fall, the team was ranked ninth in the nation by the NCAA.