Turning Possibility into Reality

School sports can increase self-esteem, teach leadership, patience, and teamwork, let alone increase physical activity. Fluvanna offers every major sport that a student can play, except for one: field hockey. “The goal is to offer as many opportunities for our student athletes as we can,” said FCHS Athletic Director Scott Morris. Although he is currently trying make field hockey an official Fluvanna school sport, doing so isn’t as easy as you might think.

Morris said that “receiving funding and having enough [students] to play” are the two things required to be given permission to start a new sport. He’d also like to make both JV and varsity teams available to the student athletes that want to play.

Since field hockey is a fall sport, you might wonder if introducing it into the existing slate of other fall sports, like Football and Cross Country, would make it hard to recruit players. However, Morris feels confident that there is already enough interest in field hockey to have both boys’ and girls’ teams. “We want to give more opportunities. We already have some students who are already interested,” said Morris. The next step in this process, he said, would be figuring out the competition. “The whole district would be our competition because everyone already has field hockey but us,” said Morris.

Field Hockey involves using a stick, called a shaft, to hit a round hard ball across the field. As with lacrosse, the goal is to hit as many balls as possible into the opposing teams net. consists of two halfs, usually 35 minutes each, and begins with a pass back. There are 11 players on each side of the field. You can play field hockey in any clothing that is comfortable, but you need a special kind of field hockey cleats to get a good grip on the field as you run. Shin guards also need to be worn to prevent serious contact with other players. Goggles, gloves, and a mouthguard should also be worn by field hockey players.

Juniors Alison Sawyer and Charlie Lasocki are both excited that the possibility of making field hockey an official school sport is coming closer and closer to reality. “It seems like an interesting sport to pick up, and since I’m involved in lacrosse, it would be something similar. It would be great to have here, especially since a lot of schools have it around here as well,” she said. Meanwhile, Lasocki likes the contact and competitiveness “I really, really want field hockey. It’s more of a contact sport like girls’ lacrosse. I like contact sports. I don’t want a girly sport.”