The George Mason field hockey team has crossed many items off their bucket list this season: defeating their rival, Bruton High School, progressing to the postseason region tournament, and persisting through the setback of graduating many seniors last year.

“I think that the fact that the team was smaller forced us to work together and improve together and the team was closer than before,” junior Lydia Grund said.

Their final record was 11-9, with three postseason games played this year. A highlight this season was the team’s first conference game versus Bruton, a team that had “slaughtered” Mason in past seasons, according to head coach Amanda Crider.  The game ended in a satisfying 2-0 win.

“I think [that] as the season went on, our expectations got higher and higher as we felt like we were getting better which made it harder to lose in [the] regional semis,” Grund said.

Despite their 0-6 loss against James Monroe and elimination from the tournament, the team is still proud of their many goals achieved this season, especially considering to the difficulty of many seniors graduating from the team last year.  

“We lost most of our goal scorers, so that was definitely a setback…in a lot of games we had trouble scoring goals,” said senior captain and defender Manon Diz.

This year’s team consisted of 16 players, seven of which were new to the varsity team. The seniors this year, Maeve Donnelly; Korinne Wills; and Manon Diz; and Hannah Hiscott; stepped in as captains, knowing that they had big shoes to fill.

“It was a big mindset of ‘we miss those girls, we love our family’ …[but] we are defining ourselves and maintaining the legacy of the program,” Coach Crider said.

Next year, Crider hopes to take the program further in her fifth year coaching, fulfilling the wishes of the seniors graduating this year.

“I would really like to see the program keep growing, especially since it’s fairly new in Falls Church… I’d like to see the team keep being as positive and supportive as it has been for me,” said Diz.