Field Hockey Tryouts Emma
“BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!” Screamed my alarm. I jolted quickly and almost fell off of my bed. My alarm had scared the heck out of me. Again. “Way to start off a new day.” I thought to myself. It was 6:00 on a Sunday morning, and I was tired. Today was the day of my field hockey tryouts. I had no idea of what to expect because I had never joined this club before. Slowly, I dragged myself off the floor, and got ready to leave. Field hockey tryouts started at 9:00, but my mom and I had to leave at 8:30 because we had know idea where we were going. We didn’t want to take a wrong turn and get lost so I’d be late. That left me about 2 half hours to find my scattered field hockey equipment and to get ready. * * * I slammed the door shut after I had hopped into the car. I was anxious, but excited to get there. The tryouts were at the MIT gym. I was trying out for one of the Cape Ann teams. On my way there, I tried to relax and think about the things I needed to do well. * * * Finally, we arrived. My heart was pounding, and I was so nervous to walk into the gymnasium. As my mom and I were walking in, I noticed other people around me carrying field hockey sticks. So I thought to myself “Okay, this is a good sign. At least this means that were going the right direction.” Although they weren’t holding regular field hockey sticks, they were holding indoor field hockey sticks. My mom noticed too. “Mom,” I shrieked in a whisper voice. “I thought this was suppose to be an indoor turf field, not just plain indoor field hockey!” “Maybe there’s both” She replied calmly. “Ugh” I said. Sure enough, there it was. An indoor hockey arena. No artificial turf, no nothing. I panicked. I had never played indoor field hockey before! I heard in the past that it was a lot faster than regular field hockey on grass or on turf. What was I supposed to do? Magically pick up my outdoor field hockey stick and start playing? I thought all of the other players had played before me. I was almost positive that was a fact. My mom had given me a little preparation talk before I went to go try out. She said to me that even if I don’t make a team, I could try out next year. But I wanted to make one of the teams. Bad. My mom was one of the captains of her field hockey team in high school so I always want to impress her with my skills, and show her that I’m good at what I’m doing. I said goodbye to my mom as she wished me luck. I ran over to the circle where all of the other girls were standing. A coach who was Irish talked to us about
what we would be doing for the next 2 hours. It seemed just liked regular hockey, but there were a few exceptions. You couldn’t lift the ball anywhere on the field (you could only lift it if your taking a shot), and you could only do push passes. “What!” I thought to myself. “This is ridiculous. How am I going to make any plays? A reverse flick is my best move! This is truly going to be impossible for me” We first did a lap around the gym, and started to stretch out so we wouldn’t pull any muscles while we were playing. Our coach told us to get into partners and start doing some passing. I pared up with a girl who looked about a year younger than me. I started out with the ball and passed it. “Well, that went a lot farther than I thought it would.” I thought. My partner received the ball, and then passed back to me. I received the ball with out missing it as well. This sequence went on for quite a while, and then our coach called all of the players and told them to gather round. He told us we would be switching into some running drills with the ball. We all sorted in to lines, and started the drill. We had to run with dribbling the ball and pass it to the player on the opposite side of the line. A few girls were in front of me, so I watched them closely to see how they handled the ball. It was finally my time to go. I received the ball, and started dribbling down to pass the ball. It flew. I was running so fast I could barely keep up with it, but I was doing well. * * * After about 30 minutes of this drill, our coach called us back in again. “Alright girls, jog in. Come on now; hurry up chop chop.” Everybody slowly dragged themselves in. He wanted us to scrimmage for the remainder of tryouts. I was excited for this. Scrimmaging is always my favorite part in practices. It was the time to show off all of your skills and what you have learned. I started out in midfield, (my favorite position to play in field hockey). The whistle blew, and the game began. One of the forwards passed the ball back to me, and I made a smart decision by passing the ball to the other forward. That one dribbled up the field making a few more passes to me and the other forward. “Here, here!” I yelled. The ball flew to me. I was right in front of the net, but a defender on the other team was guarding the right side of me (a field hockey players strong side). So I made a quick pull to my left side, and shot the ball into the net using a reverse flick. My teammates were really impressed. The game went on for about an hour and we lost by only a few points. After the game, we did some cooling down and stretching. Although indoor field hockey is a very tiring sport, I have come to find it one of the most fun ones. I judged indoor field hockey a little bit too quickly, and I realized that I actually really liked it. I ended up making a team and I was really proud of myself. If I advance quickly enough, I will be moved up to an even higher level with more advanced players!