Windsor
Six of those banners were earned by the field hockey team, a team that ended the 2014 season with 25 consecutive state tournament appearances.
But just six players signed up at the start of practice for the 2015 season, which led to the decision to suspend the program.
While sadness accompanied the news, there was positive speculation that the program could be re-energized. The number of players at the middle school level, combined with those involved with field hockey through the recreation department, indicated that an adequate feeder system was in place.
Still there was some concern as to whether those players would actually take the big step to high school field hockey. Apparently so, as 17 girls began practice last week, and on Saturday the Yellowjackets had their first competition in two years, going 2-2 in a preseason jamboree at Keene State College.
“It was a successful day,” said Jody Wood, the Yellowjackets head coach. Wood succeeds Sandy Clary, who guided the Jacks to all those championships and all those playoff appearances in her 42 years as head coach.
During four of those seasons, Wood was an assistant coach and she also has been involved with the middle school program.
Wood, 42, like almost all the school’s coaches, is a Windsor High graduate, and learned her lessons well, She was on a co-championship Windsor team in 1990, and then went to Becker College, where her team won two National Junior College Athletic Association national championships.
She held the Windsor single season scoring record of 19 goals until her daughter Haley scored 25 in 2014. Another daughter, Hannah, is a freshman and has gone through the youth and middle school programs with rave reviews.
Of the 17 players this season, none are seniors, so it appears the program is on solid footing and Wood said she is going to see that it stays this way. She admitted that this is her dream job, and she’s not going to let it get away.
“I’m jumping in with both feet,” she said. “We’re going to start the kids in kindergarten and take it all way through high school. Windsor field hockey is here to stay.”
Added Windsor Athletic Director Jim Taft: “We’re committed to it. We did the two-year thing and now were going to work hard to keep the program going.”
While Taft has been a football coach at Windsor, he bleeds green and gold no matter the sport, and it bothered him to shut down the field hockey program.
“It was heart-wrenching to do away with it,” Taft told the Valley News in February when the announcement was made that the program would return to varsity status. “Field hockey is part of our tradition and history at Windsor.”
During the two-year hiatus, three Windsor athletes, Ashleay Wilcox, Angelina Bigwood and Miranda Keough, took advantage of Vermont’s member-to-member program and played for Springfield last fall. The Cosmos won the Vermont Division II championship as Bigwood scored the deciding goals in the semifinal and championship games.
While Wilcox has graduated, Bigwood and Keough will be on this year’s Windsor team.
Bigwood is aware that even though she is just a sophomore, she will be one of the more experienced players on the team and is ready to take on a leadership role.
“We’re going to have to help each other out and stay confident even when we are down,” she said. “I feel comfortable in my role. I think we had some good leaders in Springfield last year and I learned from them.”
One player who could aid the Windsor program is a transfer from Springfield, Miranda Todt, who played a reserve role on the Cosmos championship team.
Todt said she was OK leaving Springfield for Windsor.
“I think this is going to be a positive thing for me,” the sophomore said. “I’m really comfortable with the situation. Academically and athletically it was the right move. I Just needed a change.”
Windsor, which will move down to Division III from D-II, has a strange 12-game schedule in which it will play Otter Valley three times, with the Otters coming to Windsor on Sept. 1 to start the season.
And for the first time in many years, Hartford is not on the schedule.
Jaime Nolan, who has successful field hockey seasons at Windsor and Castleton University, will assist Wood.