Greetings from the Hilltop! In preparation for the season ahead, Georgetown Field Hockey has been hard at work both on and off of thefield over the last two weeks.

Most of the team arrived back on campus on August 11th for move in, while our first day of meetings took place the following day. With a new coaching staff, comes a new mentality, a new philosophy, new rules, new tactics, and new expectations. As a staff, we have a set of standards that we expect all involved with our program to follow as we go about our daily business. We call those standards our program non-negotiables:

• Team-First…We are a FAMILY
• Be Grateful
• Be Adaptable
• Be Comfortable being Uncomfortable
• Take Ownership
• Pay Attention to Details
• Be Process-Oriented
• Energy is Contagious
• Be All-In

August 13th started our first official day of preseason and the start of a new era. For a majority of preseason, we trained twice a day, with our first session of the day starting at5:30AM. I believe there’s something to be said about waking up early and tackling the day before it tackles you, it teaches you to be on offense and not defense.  With that in mind, many of our players “tackled” their three fitness tests over a span of four days and proved their desire and willingness to change the reputation of this program. While some of our players did not originally meet the requirement of needing to pass two out of the three fitness tests in order to train, they continued to re-test and with the support of their teammates, we finally had every student-athlete pass prior to our second exhibition match at LaSalle.

As a coach, I think the most emotional day of preseason was an early morning when one of our players was re-running one of the fitness tests. She had failed in her first attempted re-run and was lacking in confidence. Her teammates whom already had passed, broke up the test into legs and ran with her, providing positive feedback, and even “pushing” her across the finish line to ensure she made her times. Once this student-athlete crossed the finish line on her final sprint, her teammates surrounded her, chanting her name, screaming, laughing and smiling. It was at that moment, that I knew we were headed in the right direction and embracing the importance of being a family.

Since the start of preseason, there have been several classroom sessions covering team dynamics. Over the span of the last two weeks, the young women who make up our program have truly shaped our identity. They’ve been tasked with creating and defining our program’s core values, setting process-oriented and outcome-oriented team goals for the season and creating a mission statement for Georgetown University Field Hockey. The manner in which this group of young women went about the process of defining their program was professional, mature and extremely encouraging.