By Emma Bynes
@emma_bynes4
Early November marks the beginning of the end for a lot of things. It signals the end of fall and daylight savings time — but for Springfield College field hockey seniors, it signals the start of the final moments of their seasons. This group of five ending their collegiate field hockey career, Kaitlyn Parent, Maya Wriesen, Audrey Hayes, Nicolette Morlock and Sarah Healy, certainly have made their mark on Springfield field hockey. They’ve accomplished 38 total wins over their four years in the program and reached three NEWMAC tournaments.
Despite still having games left to play the Pride have amassed the most wins in a single season since 2019. For their final regular season matchup of this year, the Pride took on Clark — an opponent they have not lost against since 2009.
“This group is really special to me because they were first years in my first year,” head coach Mia Olsen said. “They’ve bought into the program and they’re just really great leaders for a bunch of the younger players on and off the field. They’re just really great people to be around.”
With Kaitlyn Parent starting in goal for the Pride, one of the seniors who has been sidelined a majority of the year with a thumb injury, the offense for Springfield needed to dominate time of possession to make Parent’s job easy. Parent’s teammates did just that — keeping the ball out of the home half of the field for nearly the entire first quarter.
“I was just really grateful to say the least,” said Parent. “To see the field, much less to play a full 30 minutes and make some saves. This is a really special day celebrating the past four years of hard work and dedication.”
First-year Rachel Simkewicz and junior Hailey Gaydos had multiple opportunities to score early but couldn’t sneak the ball past Clark goalkeeper Rachel Reiter. Starting the game clean, there were no penalty corners until there were two minutes remaining in the quarter. Reiter made the save to keep the game scoreless from Springfield’s attack.
First-year goalkeeper and the usual starter for the Pride, Sam Orcutt, came in for Parent to start the second quarter. Orcutt made her presence known immediately, making saves off of two consecutive Clark penalty corners.
Springfield drove the ball downfield and Simkewicz found Gaydos once again but the pair wasn’t able to finish off the goal. With a tie game and three minutes remaining in the half, Springfield senior Sarah Healy scored just her fourth career goal and third on the season. The Pride broke the ice and headed into halftime up by one.
After capturing the momentum before half, Springfield’s attack was on a mission. Within five minutes, the Pride had earned two penalty corners, as well as first-year Sarah Goldstein having a chance to score. Reiter continued to make impressive saves, too.
The wall in goal could only hold up for so long before Hailey Gaydos found a way to score. Senior Nicolette Morlock secured a ball, which was rebounded by Reiter, and tapped it towards Gaydos who finished it off to score some crucial insurance for Springfield.
Not even two minutes later, Gaydos would return the favor and give Healy an assist. Healy was left with no defender on her right next to the Clark goal, and once again tapped the ball in to put Springfield up 3-0 with one quarter left to play.
Parent reentered the game for Orcutt to start the final quarter of play. The senior did not look rusty at all from missed time and dove to the ground to make multiple stops. Clark earned a corner with 12 minutes remaining in the game, but the defensive tandem of Morlock and Parent as well as sophomore Emma Kibbe stifled anything coming their way.
Olsen began putting players not in her usual rotation into the game with around eight minutes left. Simkewicz decided to take advantage of this and commanded the ball, taking the ball upfield herself and scoring to put the Pride up 4-0 and finish off the game.
“We’ve just been talking about putting together 60 minutes of a performance that we are happy with,” Olsen said. “We’re going to take all that good stuff from today and bring it into Tuesday.”
Springfield earned fourth place in the NEWMAC regular season standings because of their performance this year, and will host the five seed on Stagg Field on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Photo by Emma Bynes/The Student