By Christopher Tremblay, Staff Sports Writer

Hopedale has completed a little over half of its field hockey season only to find that the Blue Raiders have found themselves on a wild roller coaster ride over those 11 games.

Prior to the season even getting started Coach Shelley Hynes knew that she had graduated 8 seniors from last year’s squad and she was going to have a super young team this fall, but it got even younger when the Coach found out that one of her starters was transferring to another school and another was forgoing field hockey by playing club softball leaving her with only three seniors to grace this year’s roster.

Despite having a relatively young team Hopedale was able to secure 2 wins and a tie over its first three games of the season. With the start Hynes was feeling good and looking for her team to be competitive while keeping the scores close if they did lose. The Blue Raiders were definitely exceeding expectations during the early part of the season. 

But just as soon as the team was heading up the hill toward a promising season, things came crashing down as 5 starting players were lost for four games. Hynes called the losses debilitating, but things would only get worse when yet another starter would be sidelined for a handful of games with a hamstring injury. 

“We needed to make some adjustments and needed to move some girls up from the JV team to fill the holes,” Hynes said. “Things were not going to get easy either as we had four real tough teams coming up on our schedule.”

Hopedale went on to lose all four games, with the only silver lining being that the girls who were called up got to gain some valuable playing time on the varsity level. 

The losing continued when the five players returned with the coach chalking it up to rust despite the fact that the girls were still working hard while they were away from the team. Hopedale now found itself at 2-5-1. Before any more losing could happen the Blue Raiders rolled out three straight wins to improve to 5-5-1 and found themselves moving up the power rankings to 17. 

The younger girls were now starting to gel with the rest of the team, but despite the optimism running though their locker room, Hopedale was playing each game with a heavy heart. Steve Bassignani, who took photos of every Hopedale sport under his own volition, had passed away earlier in the year to pancreatic cancer. Without Bassignani roaming the sidelines, the field hockey team decided that they were going to dedicate the season to him.

“He was a huge loss to the community, so we dedicated our season in his memory. The girls all have purple Bass stickers on their sticks and wear black ribbons with the word Bass on their uniforms,” Hynes said. “During home game the girls have posters of themselves that we hang up; we have one of Steve in the middle. We have also raised money for cancer in his name.”

While the Roller coaster is currently riding steady Hynes has noticed that through the first half of the season 7 different girls have scored for Hopedale; something that is somewhat unusual. The Blue Raiders even have a defenseman with a goal and an assist.

Leading the Blue Raiders offensively is sophomore Lexi Carroll, the team’s center striker who has 8 goals and 6 assists for 14 points so far. 

“She’s off to a tremendous start in just seven games,” the Hopedale Coach said. “She was one who had never played field hockey before the seventh grade. She is a great athlete, has been gradually developing her skills and has so much room to grow.”

Defensively sophomore goalie Molly Gosselin has been keeping the opposition at bay. During her first full varsity season as a starter, she has allowed a mere 6 goals in 7 games this season.

“I expected Molly to really bring it this season,” Hynes said. “But I was fully unprepared for two eighth graders (Ella Stokes and Charlotte Bacon). The two were put on the team because of the lack of players and have since played lights out field hockey.”

Freshman Lexi Pessotti, who played as an eighth grader last year as the right middle has notched 2 goals while adding 6 assists. Unfortunately, she missed some time due to the injured hamstring. 

“She’s the most skilled player on the team and is lightning fast with good field hockey skills,” the Coach said. “She does a bulk of the work to move the ball down the field while passing it to the others who in turn score.”

The three senior captains have all played well though the first half of the season. Emily Frohn, left middle, has scored 5 goals and added an assist while continuing to work hard; Leah Hodgdon lost her father in the seventh grade to cancer, is our anchor on defense and Olivia McGovern, who has the least amount of experience of the three, is very aggressive and the team’s spirited captain.

Sophomore Layla Huntley, a sweeper back, led the team during the four-game suspensions and has ben holding down the defense all year long. Eighth graders Olivia Ingemi, center midfielder, has 3 goals and can play anywhere for the Blue Raiders and Evee Cook, a defender, shares the back position with Abby Fitzgibbons.

Prior to the season getting underway Hynes realistically was hoping for a .500 season and they would go from there.

“We had those four tough games that we probably would have lost even if we had the six starters,” she said. “But we would have been able to keep the goals against down to help us with our power rankings. We are a very young team with more 8th and 9th graders (7) than our sophomores and seniors (6).”

Since the season has gotten underway Hynes has had to reevaluate her goals. 

“The younger kids are not only in shape but are confident in their game at this point,” Hynes said. “We should be able to make a pretty good run though the Division 4 State Tournament. Last year we got to the Round of 8, the furthest we’ve ever gone and are hoping this year to go even deeper.”