Homefield Disadvantage: Why hasn’t Georgetown’s field hockey team had a winning season in over a decade?

Two years ago, Hannah Carey (COL ‘16) was facing one of the hardest decisions she had ever had to make. She had an offer from Harvard, where she could have played field hockey for the Crimson. However, she also had an offer from Georgetown, her mother’s alma mater. Even though Georgetown’s field hockey team was not ranked as highly by the NCAA as Harvard’s, the promise of a team in a competitive environment on the rise convinced her to join the Hoyas. A year after playing for the team, however, Carey’s experience with the field hockey program has led her to drop the sport completely.

Georgetown’s 23 varsity teams are part of the NCAA’s Division I and participate in the Big East Conference. Unlike the University’s renowned basketball program, however, the field hockey team has not had a winning season since 2002, and the lack of resources allocated to the team has created great discontent between players, alumni, and parents related to the team, who decided to mobilize against the University in the fall of 2013.

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Annette Ballou, mother of one of the players of the field hockey team, has seen her daughter struggle through her college career, together with the rest of the team, due to a lack of adequate resources.

“As you watch a person grow up and pursue their goals and work very hard to perfect their sport or whatever it is they do, and it comes around time for college when they are recruited, you want them to wind up in a good place,” Ballou said.

Her daughter had several offers to play at other institutions of higher education, all Division I, but chose Georgetown because of its high academic level, and the promise that the team was rebuilding and would be competitive in the years to come.

“They were sold on a program that is perhaps not the best program that an offer was given for, but it’s the program where an athlete feels like they can make the most difference,” Ballou said.

Carey shared this initial enthusiasm about being able to make a difference on the team, but quickly realized that playing for a team that couldn’t even practice on its own campus was a drain on her time on the Hilltop.

“I stopped playing because, essentially, I didn’t think the program was what it was going to be,” Carey said. “I wanted to do more at Georgetown and field hockey was a huge time restraint.”

Even though Carey was cognizant of the challenges the field hockey team was facing when she committed to play at Georgetown, she wasn’t discouraged by them initially. “Coming in, I knew we didn’t have our own field and I knew we didn’t have the best team. I still thought I’d get a lot out of it. I still love my teammates. For me, it’s just that we don’t get any attention on campus,” Carey said.

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The field hockey team has not been offered an on-campus space to practice or host games since 2006. Instead, the team has been traveling between College Park, Md. and the American University field to play. This, naturally, leads to a decrease in the popularity of the team and student attendance at games.

“On average, we have maybe two Georgetown students attending each game, in addition to some parents. It is disheartening to play for a crowd smaller than many of us had at our high school games,” Brooke Simone (SFS ‘15), a junior defender for the field hockey program, wrote in an email to the Voice.

Several players and parents believe the lack of an on-campus practicing space represents a larger problem of the athletics department keeping the field hockey team on the periphery of its priorities.

Whether the lack of attention to the field hockey program is due to an apathetic office or the need to comply with the standards of Title IX, absence of resources has left a large number of problems within the program unaddressed, which in turn has upset its participants.

“We do believe that the team and administration [should] create a strategic plan for the future. We feel that we are forgotten sport, created for the sake of Title IX,” said Georgetown field hockey mother Beth Murphy. “We believe there needs to be more training and coaching. We are one of the few schools that has never had a spring season.”

Title IX is a law that was enacted as a part of the Education Amendments of 1972. The code requires that schools allocate education programs and extracurricular participation opportunities in a non-discriminatory manner. Schools with sports teams can comply in one of three ways: match the percentages of male and female athletes with the percentages of male and female students; expand athletic opportunities for the under-represented sex; or fully and effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of said sex.

“The seniors in the program when I was a freshman really did not like the program,” Carey said. “When you have leaders who don’t like the program, then no one is going to like the program. And there were ten of them, so that caused a lot of tension.”

In addition, the distant training locations makes it difficult for the players to also function as students. “Having practice from 12 until four, as a student, you can’t take any classes from that time period, which is incredibly hard. I essentially couldn’t take a class from 12:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.,” Carey said.

While the academic stresses weigh heavily on the minds of the members of the field hockey teams, so do the monetary concerns facing their program. “A lot of the money goes to transportation. We have to get a bus to every game whether it is home or away. We have to drive to practice,” Carey said.

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The lack of a home field isn’t the only difference between Georgetown’s field hockey program and those of its competitors in the Big East.

“Compared to our competitors, Georgetown field hockey is under-resourced. … We only have two scholarships compared to fully funded Big East programs that we play against,” Simone wrote.

The NCAA caps the number of full field hockey scholarships at 12 per school. It’s even possible for a school to offer 24 half-scholarships to its players if it can. According to players and parents, however, Georgetown is falling behind this imposed limit.

After several emails sent through the span of 13 days, University Sports Information department declined to offer any comment on the budget of the field hockey team and any of the claims made by players and parents interviewed for this article.

“We sponsor a broad-based athletics program that supports each of our 29 varsity sports and 750 student athletes. We are committed to strategic excellence that focuses on providing the opportunity for our student-athletes to excel both athletically and academically,” Lee Reed, director of athletics at Georgetown University, wrote in an email to the Voice.

Simone also highlights a deficiency in staff as one of the main problems with the field hockey program. “Our coaching team is understaffed; most teams have three or four coaches and we only have two,” she wrote.

Big East schools such as University of Connecticut and Rutgers both are lead by at least three coaches. Old Dominion field hockey is trained by three coaches and a volunteer assistant coach. After former Head Coach Tiffany Marsh left the program last week to pursue another coaching opportunity, the Hoyas are down to one coach.

In addition, another weakness that Simone points out of the program is the lack of international players due to weak recruiting power.

“Our resources for recruiting are minimal and thus our scouting is not as intensive as other schools. Field hockey is a sport played globally and most teams we play against have a slew of international players, whereas we have none,” Simone wrote. The University of North Carolina field hockey team, for instance, has recruited six international players from countries such as Zimbabwe and Germany.

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The field hockey team hasn’t had a winning season since 2002. In 2008, the program didn’t win a single game. To many incoming families and players, this wouldn’t have been a problem if they had seen the change that they were promised when offered a spot in the team. “We all understood the losing record,” said Ballou. “But we were promised that this was a building program. So it’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch when there isn’t enough attention being paid for it to build.”

Murphy believes that Georgetown’s promise goes deeper than words exchanged between coaches and potential players.

“The promise is a commitment to excellence. As a Jesuit institution, we’re all supposed to be committed to excellence through sports and academics. Student athletes are the epitome if they are able to achieve both. We don’t believe that the commitment to excellence has been practiced,” Murphy said.

The lack of attention from the athletics department galvanized Ballou, Murphy, and other parents, players, and alumni into action, who in the  fall of 2013 decided to try and make an organized effort to mitigate the situation.

“There was a parent meeting, and the general thought was that we will do anything to improve this field hockey team because it’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch this. Every single week it’s another loss,” Ballou said.

The parents first began by trying to address problems with the amount of money allocated to the team. So far, however, the athletics department still has not allowed this coalition to view the budget numbers. This action incentivized Ballou and other parents to find their own ways to raise funds for the team.

“The first thing we did was raise a bunch of money and said, ‘Ok we’re going to help this field hockey program.’ We said, ‘we’re going to put our money where our mouth is.’ It wasn’t a ton of money, but we raised around $45,000 through family donations,” Ballou said.

The group has also began a petition to be signed by parents and alumni to convince the University to take a look at the treatment of the program.

In addition, field hockey supporters began lobbying the president’s office for a meeting before the end of the 2013. The parents and alumni involved had already contacted the athletics department multiple times with their concerns but didn’t feel like their voices had been heard due to a perceived lack of changes. They instead tried to contact President DeGioia directly with little success.

“On November 17, we drafted the first letter requesting a meeting with the president. Brooke, Callie, and Maria walked it in. From that point on we have been sending e-mails, sending letters, having phone conversations with [Joseph Ferrara, the Chief of Staff],” Ballou said.

A group of three field hockey players finally had a chance to sit down with a member of the president’s office last Thursday when they walked in and managed to have an impromptu meeting with Ferrara.

“The girls did go in on Thursday to once again try and get a meeting with the president. They actually sat down with Mr. Ferrara for about 45 minutes and were able to tell him a little bit more about field hockey and the issues as the team perceives them. He seemed to be engaged and he seemed to be on it,” Ballou said. “It looks like perhaps, given some attention, things are looking a little more positive now.”

According to Ballou, Ferrara is due to update the three players who met with him on his progress in addressing the issues presented to him by this Friday, Jan. 24.

However, even after the meeting last Thursday, Simone believes there are still major steps to take. “We want Georgetown to uphold its promise, explained in its Athletic Core Values, of a ‘commitment to excellence’ and ‘exceptional competitive success,’ and to do so by better supporting Georgetown field hockey.”

According to Ballou and Simone, both the parents and the players are invested in working with the University towards a stronger program, “Really we want to work in a partnership.” They’re working hard and want the athletics department right alongside them. “We have a huge group of supporters and that’s our message to the University. You listen to what we have to say, we’ll listen to what you have to say, and we’ll move forward.”

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It has been a year since Carey has left the field hockey team, but the bonds she shares with the other players transcends the challenges the program faces. “You get incredibly close with your teammates, being together that much. I still love my team. My best friends are on the team.”

To the players, the field hockey team is stronger than the problems that they face.  “You stick around for each other,” Carey said.