NEWTON, Mass. – After finishing 6th in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) standings a year ago, the Mount Ida College field hockey team is looking to head back to the GNAC playoffs, after being downed 5-1 by Anna Maria in the quarterfinals in 2015.
Head Coach Nicole Poli, in her third season at the helm of the program and assistant coach Jess Paulin, are eager to get the season started this Thursday when the team heads to Dudley, Massachusetts to take on the Bison of Nichols College with game time slated for 4:00 PM.
Poli and Paulin also welcome first year assistant coach Miranda Murphy, who is familiar with Mount Ida as she works within the office of admissions.
"This year's team has a special bond that myself as well as the other assistants have noticed and we really believe that bond is going to have an effect on how we perform on the field this season," explained Poli. "The girls have been working extremely hard since day one of preseason back on August 19th and we'll be ready for Nichols on Thursday."
Mount Ida was selected by the GNAC coaches to finish 6th in the conference for the coming season and Poli and the Mustangs will surely use that preseason ranking as extra motivation heading into non-conference play and surely into league play.
The Mustangs are led by a group of four juniors in Co-captain's Lexi Minicucci (Westfield, Mass.), Cregan Callahan (Diamond Point, N.Y.), Emily Salls (Springvale, Me.) and Emily McConnell (Lowell, Mass.). Minicucci and Callahan will hold down the middle of the field for the Mustangs while Salls and McConnell will take charge defensively for the Mustangs. Freshmen Melissa McNamara (Wilmington, Mass.) will be relied upon to add extra depth for the green and white in the midfield.
Minicucci led all scorers for Mount Ida last year tallying 11 goals while teammate and returner Sarah Hemstock (Northford, Conn.) finished with seven.
Hemstock who will join forces in the midfield with Minicucci and Callahan, and fellow sophomore Suzanne Thibault (Douglas, Mass.) will join the defense as she looks to continue her streak of consecutive games started as she started all seventeen games for the Mustangs last season.
Freshmen Grace Ryan (Livermore Falls, Me.) and Jessica Henry (Wilbraham, Mass.) will be in between the pipes for the Mustangs this year after McConnell transitions from being in net last year to the defensive side of things.
Junior Kerra Denny (Oakland, R.I.), freshmen Sara Hall (Barnegat, N.J.), Lindsey Hildreth (Westbrook, Me.) and Taylor Lincoln (Rye, N.H.) as well as sophomore Eleanor Garvey (Westminster, Md.) will look to anchor the Mustang front line while adding a lot of depth up top for the Mustangs.
The Mustangs' home opener will be on September 8th when they take on Wheelock with game time set for 7:30 PM while the GNAC home opener will take place two days later on September 10th when they welcome Johnson and Wales to Alumni Field with a 12:00 PM start time.