Last month, Maddy Carpenter and Nikki Parsley of the Northwestern field hockey team traveled to London with the USA Junior National Squad’s Under-21 Team. And while you’d think that the experience would be exciting and nerve-wracking, it was a long time coming.
The tryout process for the Junior National Squad began with a week-long training camp last July. After that, the two ‘Cats were named to the Junior National Squad, but had to wait until January to compete for a spot on the touring team. Once again, both Parsley and Carpenter made the cut.
The tryouts took place in Chula Vista, Calif., at the Olympic Training Center. “It’s exciting because it’s such a high level of field hockey,” says Carpenter, a freshman goalkeeper for the Wildcats. “We were with out friends just playing some really good hockey – and in warm weather, which was nice for January.”
The next step for the pair came March 31, when Parsley and Carpenter traveled to Newport, England to compete in four matches against the Under-21 England National Team. Despite being in a different continent and a competitive atmosphere, the girls were comfortable because they knew most of their teammates from previous playing experience. Last year, Carpenter played for the Under-21 Team, while Parsley had previously played for the Under-19 team.
“The group changes sometimes,” says Parsley, a sophomore forward, “but they try to generally keep the same people together.” Carpenter agreed, saying that she’d previously played with all but four of her 18 London teammates.
A typical day in England began, of course, with breakfast: “porridge and only porridge,” Parsley says. After that, the schedule for the day depended on whether or not there was a game to be played, and if there was, when it was set to begin.
“If it was a game day, we’d usually have a heart rate spike… go for a run or a walk, just to get moving,” Carpenter says. “If [a game was at] 7:00, you have to stay focused all day, whereas the 12:00 [games], you get up and get right into it.”
With all four matches against the same team, the team made subtle adjustments as the tournament continued. “We always talked about what we were going to do differently from the game before, because each game, England would change its form a little bit,” Carpenter says. “We have to be ready for that in order to be successful, so there was a lot of strategizing.”
Strategizing was Parsley’s favorite part of the experience. After dominating the first game – “we pretty much killed them,” Parsley says – the USA team had to prepare for subsequent matches. “It was awesome to see the coaches strategizing, breaking down video and showing us. It was really little adjustments that we needed to make, but that was what was most fun for me, playing-wise,” Parsley says.
As far as off-the-field fun, the pair says that they didn’t really explore England. “People say how it’s really cool we get to travel, but really we just get to see a lot of different field hockey fields,” Carpenter says, though Parsley added that they did take a trip to an abbey closed by King Henry VIII. Still, the girls agreed that the unique team dynamic is what made the experience special.
“It’s interesting because a lot of coaches tell us that our group is special. We are really good friends, we play off each other really well. On a lot of tour teams, sometimes there’s not that,” Carpenter says. “With us, we’re really close. We’re able to have a good time.”
Parsley says that, especially in the face of the constant evaluation and competition of the field hockey world, the team’s closeness is remarkable. “I think a lot of times when you’re playing at such a high level and you’re playing with such high stakes, it could get a clique-y on a team. The ultimate goal is to make the National Team, so it could get a little cutthroat, but it doesn’t at all with our group,” Parsley says. While she stopped short of calling the experience a vacation, she affectionately referred to it as “a business trip with your best friends.” Additionally, Parsley added that because the field hockey community is so small, players often encounter the same teammates over and over again, which allows them to bond well together.
While their current success has kept them playing together, Parsley and Carpenter traveled different paths to college field hockey. Parsley didn’t start playing seriously until eighth grade. She started the Futures program in 10th grade and played hockey for both her high school and a club team, Jersey Intensity, and eventually chose to play hockey instead of softball in college. “I was a lot better at softball,” she says. “It wasn’t until I started getting offers from softball schools and then hockey schools that I really started to figure out what I wanted to do for four years of my life.”
Carpenter, on the other hand, says she “jumped in goal” on a whim after having played soccer for most of her young life. She started training with Nomads, a club team, joined the Futures program in eighth grade, and knew by her freshman year of high school that she wanted to play in college. By her sophomore year, she’d resolved to do whatever was necessary to play Division I, and on Sept. 1 of her junior year, she started receiving emails from college coaches.
Now back from their European hiatus, Parsley and Carpenter are in the midst of Northwestern’s spring season. Training is “pretty intense right now, but it’s been really awesome. I think we’re really gelling as a team,” Parsley says. And although she says the team “overachieved” last year, beating ranked teams like Cal and University of Virginia and posting a 12-9 over record, Parsley says next year’s goal is to win the Big Ten Championship next fall and earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Before that, though, comes summer competition, which includes High Performance, which Parsley says is essentially an all-star tournament featuring teams from seven regions of the country. In addition to boasting outstanding college athletes, each team will be joined by four players from the National Team, and Carpenter says High Performance is technically a tryout for the National Team. The summer also features Junior National Camp, which brings the top 50 players in the age group to the University of Massachusetts for a week. Players who qualify for that team will move on to the Junior World Cup this fall.
Even with the constant pressure of competition, Parsley says she does not focus on what other people think of her play. “I don’t even look at it like that,” she says. “I just go and play field hockey, because that’s what I know.”
Carpenter agreed, and says that one of the things that she and Parsley uniquely share is their work ethic. “It’s what we love. No one’s going to say that we can’t work hard enough, because it will just make us work harder,” she says. “You tell me I can’t and I’ll show you otherwise.”