My name is Michelle Morin. It’s my second year playing for Tripp’s field hockey team. We have been undefeated ever since I first started playing.

The score was tight this JV game. The players had sweat sliding down their beet-red faces. The score was 1-0 and our team has been undefeated for almost two years now. We couldn’t let history down. We had to score a goal, but the problem was, our players weren’t evenly matched. The other team’s coach was putting her varsity players in the junior varsity game, making it almost impossible for us to score. Mt. Ararat was a tough team this time around.

The ball was in the middle of the field for most of the time. I was a left mid for this game and was doing okay, although I had been scored on in the varsity game when I was goalie. Our coach called time out and we all spoke our minds. A couple of girls were saying how we needed to mark up, or guard someone on the opposite team. We all agreed on that and talked about our passing skills for the next 10 seconds.

The whistle blew and we went back onto the field. It was about 15 minutes into the game and we were extremely frustrated. We were trying so hard to get the ball up that we couldn’t concentrate on what we had learned over the season. We had already played Mt. Ararat and we beat them by quite a bit last time we played them. We didn’t understand our problem.

After struggling for a few minutes, we finally got the ball in the circle. The other team had used their feet to get the ball and it was a corner. I was at the top of the circle and the ball was coming to me. The runner hit the ball and I got it. As soon as I stopped the ball, I hit the ball with my stick as hard as an elephant would hit its foot on the ground when it was angry. It would have gone in, but my team and I weren’t positioned right so our offense hit the ball out.

The ball was moved by one of the Mt.Ararat players to the top of the 16 yard line. They hit the ball. I heard the countdown to the end of the game. Five, four, three, two! I hit the ball toward the goal and missed again. We lost our first game in two years and we were frustrated out of our minds. We couldn’t believe it. But then we thought, we just basically played their varsity team as a junior varsity team. We were happy with what we had accomplished because we played fair and showed good sportsmanship.