Hadgraft Back At The Helm With Field Hockey Team

By Andy Hutchison

Amanda Hadgraft, who took off a season from coaching last fall, is back with the Newtown High School field hockey team this campaign, and excited to be a part of the action.

“It’s great being able to come back and still have some of the girls that I used to coach, and not coming back to team of faces I don’t know — so it’s nice,” Hadgraft said.

Hadgraft said some of the freshmen she remembers from the program in the 2009 season are now juniors with much more experience and are now members of the varsity squad. “So it’s nice to see how much they’ve grown up — to see how much they’ve changed as players,” Hadgraft said.

A decline in numbers of participants leaves the program without a freshman team this fall. The strength of NHS field hockey is, however, in numbers on offense. Of 36 junior varsity/varsity players, 20 are forwards, Hadgraft said.

The question is, will the strength in numbers on offense equate to offensive productivity in games? Field hockey is a defensive game by nature, and the Nighthawks were shut out in all eight of their regular season losses a year ago. Five of those losses were one-goal nail-biters. Hadgraft believes her back-liners and goaltenders are up to the task of keeping the Hawks in each game regardless of how many balls the team puts into the opposing squad’s cages.

Newtown is coming off a 6-8-2 campaign, but went 3-1-1 in the final five games. NHS was the No. 7 team in the South-West Conference Tournament and fell 2-0 to No. 2 Pomperaug of Southbury in the tourney’s quarterfinals. The team earned the Class L state tourney’s No. 16 seed and blanked No. 17 Newington 2-0 in the qualifying round before falling 5-2 to top-seeded and eventual co-champion Glastonbury 5-2 in the first round.

The goal this year is to turn some of those close defeats into wins and come out above .500.

“We would like to have a winning season. I think the girls have the heart for it. They definitely have their minds in it,” the coach said. “I have a lot of hopes for this year. I think the girls want it enough to make things happen.”

The last time Hadgraft coached, she left the field with that oh-so-close but empty feeling after the nine-win Nighthawks fell to South Windsor following three overtimes and penalty strokes in state tourney play. Hadgraft, a former player at NHS from 2001 to 2004, coached the Nighthawks past Pomperaug in the SWC title game in 2008.

This year’s team will have to overcome the loss of several starters and reserves to graduation, but retains a wealth of talent throughout the field. Senior captains are defender Jessica Haitz, forward Katelyn Kean, who is injured, and midfielder Kaitlyn VosWinkel.

Other key players Hadgraft will look to for success are senior forwards Kayla O’Leary and Nicole DeFelice, senior midfielder Lexi Black, senior defender Jenna Poetl, and junior midfielder Caroline Kingsley. Goaltending will be provided by senior Liz Eiseman and junior Lauren Sarna.

The Nighthawks are scheduled to begin the season on Friday, September 16, when New Fairfield visits Treadwell Park for a 4 pm game.

NHS will visit always-dominant Pomperaug on September 20.