Photo courtesy Mark Palczewski/USA Field Hockey
Nestled right off of route 30 in the Spooky Nook sports complex of Lancaster County, is the home of the USA Women’s Field Hockey team. They have called Central Pennsylvania home for the past four years, the move from California to the mid-state has brought their players closer to home. The team is filled with East Coast athletes hailing from New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia but it’s the Pennsylvania connection that made it special for one player who says, “Pennsylvania is the hot bed of field hockey.”
Following in the footsteps of her older sister, Kathleen Sharkey, a Pennsylvania native, joined her middle school field hockey team. Instantly falling in love with the sport and pursuing any opportunity to play year-round. The national team was not even a glimmer in her eye earlier on.
“I focused on the next goal in front of me,” Sharkey says. “When I got to high school I just wanted to make the varsity [team]. When I joined the U.S. Field Hockey program, I just wanted to get selected for the events that I was eligible for…I focused on the level that I was at.”
Field hockey has been growing in popularity for years on the East Coast and California, the sport is striving to become as popular as other girls’ sports nationwide. In Pennsylvania, field hockey is a visible sport, widely covered in sports media. The next step for field hockey is expanding to the Midwest and southern parts of the country so that this sport is played all over the country.
Being an elite athlete and a female puts the spotlight on these women to be role models for girls dreaming of becoming professional athletes one day. The USA Field Hockey players are fulltime athletes, training double sessions year-round in Lancaster. With the limited amount of professional sports for women, this opportunity has a particular special meaning to Sharkey.
“It’s amazing to have younger girls look up to me as a female athlete and role model,” Sharkey says. “It’s great to see, when we play an international competition in Lancaster to have so many young girls in the crowd…helping them see that this is something that they can accomplish and if they put their minds to it, they can reach similar levels.”
Not familiar with field hockey? A classic from Ancient Greece, it’s one of the world’s oldest sports. While field hockey is not widely understood or played in the United States where it is mainly played by women, worldwide, it is played by both men and women. Here are the basics: the game is played 11-on-11, players use sticks to drive a ball into a net to score points. The mid-state offers many opportunities to learn, play, and watch the sport. Check out a Team USA game in Lancaster or the 2016 and 2017 D II Field Hockey National Champions Shippensburg University.
“Take risks. In the moments when you fail, that is when you learn the most” –Olympic athlete Kathleen Sharkey
