For the first year ever, the EHS Girls’ Field Hockey Team has been granted use of the main turf field for their games. The field has been utilized for games for multiple athletics, such as boys football, and boys and girls soccer, but never the eat, sleep, and work field hockey competitors.

Like many of the upperclassmen players, junior Noah Manibusan was not expecting the change at all. “It’s always been something we wanted, but didn’t see it happening.”

Freshman Sadie Starwalt-Cook explained that the grass field is incredibly hard to play in. The ball gets caught in the grass, is more difficult to control and is often hidden by the clumps. “It [playing on the turf] is like hitting through this melted butter.”

The freshmen are ecstatic about the change, but few are as joyous as the veterans. Senior Maggie Evans feels that with having use of the turf, everyone realizes how important it is to use every minute one can. “It was difficult not having practice on the turf because a lot of private schools had that advantage over us,” Evans said.

Manibusan suspects that a huge asset to the new use of the turf field is how much more the girls get accomplished, and in turn, how much better they perform. The work they accomplished paid off this weekend, the varsity team winning the Gateway Classic Tournament.

Even though this opportunity was granted late, the players are not unappreciative of other sports getting priority over them.

As Evans puts it, “We don’t view ourselves as being less privileged than the other teams. We just realize that we’ve worked harder for what we’ve earned.”