Fresh faces.

With almost 90 girls signed up to play, field hockey looks to make their debut against Glenbard West.

“I think the biggest challenge will be making sure everyone has a positive season. A lot of these players are very competitive, as am I, and I know that it will be frustrating learning a new sport and playing great teams in the area.” Coach Julia Millon said.

Millon said that her goal as coach of this new team is to get the players familiar with the sport so that the girls can all get as much playing time as possible, and improve throughout the course of the season.

An astonishing number of girls are playing this year, some even dropping other fall sports to pick up this unknown game.

“It was very easy to find girls who were interested in playing because there are no fall field sports for girls,” Sarah Skidmore, co-founder explained.

In hopes to become a varsity sport in the next few years, co-founders Marnie O’malley, Sarah Skidmore and Aubrey O’neil said that they needed to have a big number of people signed up for the first season and enough support to achieve success.

“The students really spearheaded the founding of this team. They have helped me organize meetings, recruit players, and come up with important skills and drills to work on these first few weeks of practice,” Millon said. “This team would not have happened without the hard work of the students who wanted this to happen.”

As just one of 20 teams here in Illinois, the girls field hockey team has a chance to build a strong, winning program for years to come by facing some of the best competition in the state week in and week out in their very first year.