WJ field hockey defeated Clarksburg in a dominating 7-0 shutout on Wednesday, Oct. 15 in their final regular season game. Despite finishing the regular season with a 4-8 record, the team has gone 3-1 in their last four games, giving them momentum and optimism for a potential playoff run.
“I think that as we’ve grown as a team we’ve gotten better with every game. We all know each other really well now, and our skills have all improved as the season has gone on,” senior Alex Krouse said.
Being a newer and relatively inexperienced team, the Wildcats have had to make adjustments and improvements to their game both individually as players and as a whole team in order to find success on the field.
“I just think that we’ve really improved since the beginning of the year, especially since a lot of players are new. We’ve done a good job improving and understanding our mistakes, and wanting to act on them instead of knowing we’ve made mistakes and not doing anything about it,” junior Bailey Wexler said.
After their seventh loss of the season, the Wildcats beat Paint Branch 7-0 at home on Oct. 6, paving way for their strong end-of-season finish. The Cats lost a close contest against Damascus 1-0, before beating Richard Montgomery 4-1 at home and ending their season with a shutout on the road against Clarksburg.
“I think what’s changed the most is our attitude, because I think when we win one game it persuades us and it makes us really hype to win more games,” sophomore Addie Mason said.
The team will get a tough test in the first round, as they travel to face the red-hot Churchill Bulldogs. The Bulldogs have looked nearly unstoppable so far this year as they’ve gone 11-1 in the regular season, winning their last eleven games. In their regular-season meeting on Oct. 3, the Wildcats fell to the Bulldogs 5-0.
“[We need to] be persistent, Churchill is a very good team but I think if we stay on our defense and we have confidence we have a higher chance of making the ratio not as big,” Wexler said
The Wildcats are preparing to embrace their first-round challenge head on when they take on the Bulldogs on Thursday, Oct. 23.
“We are definitely a new team and we’re growing a lot, but I think our area of improvement is honestly our motivation because we know that this is going to be a really hard game, and Churchill is really good,” Mason said. “So I think we’re just gonna try to improve on our attitude and how we play and how we feel.”
