The Scotch Plains-Fanwood girls’ Varsity Field Hockey team has dominated their season this year. The team advanced to county quarterfinals and has made headlines throughout the town. Here’s a look into their season from captain Cassidy Novello, goalie Emilia Sacento, and left forward player Bridget Ennis. On Oct 14, the team won their 12th game, doubling their winning record from last season.  
 
What is your goal for the season?
Cassidy Novello: I wanted to beat Columbia and Westfield, advance to the third round of counties, and advance to the second round of states. So far we have accomplished 3 out of the four goals, and I could not be happier. An additional goal I had was to make this season the best that the program had ever seen, and I believe that that goal has definitely been accomplished.
 
Emilia Sacento: At the beginning of the season I knew that I really wanted to double our wins from last year. I think that if we are able to achieve this goal it will prove how much we are growing as a program, and show everyone how hard we worked to get to this point. To achieve this goal we need to get two more wins this season to double our record from last year, and I think that if the team puts their mind to this and works hard until the very last game we will be able to do this easily. 
I also wanted to give a little shoutout to our coaches Ally Niedig and Sarah Weber for making us the best team that we could possibly be, and teaching us to love the game as much as they do. 
 
How would you describe the team dynamic? 
Bridget Ennis:  The team dynamic is a positive one, I believe everyone boosts people up and we all maintain a positive mindset.
 
CN: Personally, the team dynamic this year is easily the best it’s been overall four years. I’m just super impressed with how quickly we all gelled back together, especially with some of the incoming freshmen. We all get along very well, and for the most part, our communication is spot on. We pretty much have been hanging out like 2-3 times a week, and that really helped us, particularly at the beginning of the season when a lot of players had come up from JV. We are a really close program, you can ask any kid on the team and they would probably tell you that we are… always together. Overall this year we have truly been working as a unit, both on and off the field.
 
How do you think the field hockey team has grown this season?
 
CN: Going from our first year where we only won a single game as JV to now, where we can win 10 games before our seasons over is truly remarkable. We have gained some stellar athletes that really put our team together and we just got better and better as the years went on. I think it really helps that kids worked over the season and came in prepared, and pretty much everyone improved. Our goalie is probably one of the best in the county, Emilia is absolutely amazing for her age as she’s only a sophomore and got so much better over the course of the year, she is easily one of the main reasons why we have been doing so well. Overall we just improved and improved, and this year we came out guns-a-blazing and are tearing up our conference. 2 out of the four teams we lost to earlier this year we beat, and we even beat Union twice in a row after they beat us, and they are not easy to play.
 
ES: Over this past season our group has really gotten close on the field and off, so everyone on the team plays really well together because we’re all able to identify our teammate’s strengths and weaknesses and apply them to the way we played in the games.