Hopes, dreams, aspirations, these are all words that we hope become actions that will help us achieve what we want in life. We hope that they become our reality.
The van door would open and I would climb up the step, barely able to reach the handle to plop into my car seat. It was especially hard with the thumb of one hand in my mouth and the other holding my “pink blankie.” The sky would be crisply unlight and the cool wind would pierce my uncovered ankles — only to be lightly covered by my Barbie pajamas. My mom would place my younger sister, Maeve, in her car seat across from me, and my brother, Finn, would climb into the front seat with chocolate milk in hand. We would soon drop my brother off at the front door. My mom would help him unload his smelly bag and stick and then he would be off into the artificial arctic for an hour once the clock reached 6 a.m. We walked to the same spot on the freezing cold benches that would pierce my bottom, which would become numb to the touch after an hour of sitting while watching young boys fling pucks into a net. We did this every morning from my days in Barbie pajamas to being able to drive myself to the rink to watch my brother represent Team USA in Plymouth.
Watching my brother roll out of bed at 6 a.m. every morning to go get in an extra skate before school taught me my 1%.
Growing up in a family full of athletes, I was handed a basketball with a big red Badger on it by my dad the first time that I started walking. As I got older, and after dipping my toes into just about every sport, I found my passion: field hockey.
I started playing field hockey in second grade. I started out playing on a Rec and Ed team with all of my best friends and our all-time favorite coach: Coach Bruce. Coach Bruce taught us to be teammates and how to play field hockey but most importantly, how to work hard. A group of us played for Coach Bruce until sixth grade and then joined Pinnacle, an Ann Arbor based travel field hockey team. This is where it all began.
My field hockey journey at U12 started strong. I made the A team and got to play at Disney World with all of my friends. I would continue to make the A team until I reached my seventh grade year which was the year that I decided I wanted to play collegiate field hockey at a Division I program. I was placed on the B team that year and was told that I needed to work on my leadership skills. While disappointed, it was my first opportunity to prove them wrong and show that I had great leadership and deserved to be on the A team. I went on to win that tournament with the B team and the following year got moved back up to the A team. I got 1% better each day that year until I got back up onto the team that I wanted to be on.
My freshman year is when my recruiting journey started — one of the most difficult journeys I have experienced thus far. Since I was little, my dream has always been to attend an Ivy League school. Naturally, that transitioned to wanting to play field hockey at one. The summer going into my freshman year was one of the most important summers of my life. I would go to Skyline High School every morning with two of my other teammates and we would play field hockey and run sprints until our muscles felt like noodles. We did this every day for three months. I would get 1% better each day that I trained. I went on to be one of three freshmen to make varsity my first year.
From there, my process got increasingly difficult. During my sophomore year club season I was gone almost every weekend traveling for field hockey while still trying to maintain a 4.0 in the classroom. Balancing travel and school was hard but I knew that if I got 1% better each day, my path would lend itself to something I had wanted for so long. Then junior year rolled around: the biggest recruiting year and the toughest academically. I would email 25 schools before each tournament in hopes that they would come and watch my games and be impressed with what they saw. Most of the year would be spent seeing my dream school on the sidelines after halftime because I was getting minimal minutes. That would be followed by an email a week later that they were going in another direction. It was devastating.
I tried to keep Finn in the back of my mind during each of those games and after getting dragged to the rink at 5:45 a.m. every morning for years. “Just get 1% better each day,” is all I could hear him and my dad telling me. After countless rejections, my dream of attending an Ivy League school was slipping through my fingertips.
Come spring of my junior year, a school reached out and asked if I would be interested in coming to take a look at their campus because they had seen me play at a tournament and were impressed. I did some research on the school and started to get excited about what I saw.
A few months later, my mom and I flew out for my official visit to Stonehill College, a small school just outside of Boston with a Division I field hockey team. After loving every part of what I had seen, I would later commit to the school and become a Skyhawk.
My journey with school and athletics has been anything but easy. Although I am preparing to leave in July to begin my preseason and journey at Stonehill, I am brought back to my brother and dad’s voice in my head every day telling me to just get 1% better — every single day.
