East Grand Rapids High School

EGR Varsity Field Hockey v. Detroit Country Day School- 10.22.24 The adage is that only one team finishes the season with a win. The rest, inevitably, lose as they fall out of the tournament. And any time that happens, it feels like the season crashes to a halt. This has new meaning for East Grand Rapids Field Hockey as they had to rise above adversity on Tuesday, October 22 to play their Quarterfinal Play-off match versus Detroit Country Day School. Having left the school with plenty of time to arrive and have a solid warm-up, the journey to the east side of the state halted abruptly at the junction of I-96 and I-275 North. The school bus taking the team to the match ended up colliding with three other cars and the construction convoy vehicles before coming to rest on the side of the road, out of harms way. Thankfully, no one was injured beyond some soreness and bruising that became evident the next day. When asked if they wanted to continue on to play the match that night, every single girl put their thumb up! Adversity like this was not going to deter this group of tough women. As Coach Chun has espoused from the beginning, “Not everything is always going to go your way. Sometimes you play through adversity. It is what creates your mental toughness. In these moments it is all between the ears!” Arriving late and being afforded a 20-minute warm-up was good enough to get the bodies warm, the wiggles out and the mind on the game at hand. Accident aside, there was business to attend to and DCDS was not going to take it easy on EGR. This was a Quarterfinal game for the State Tournament. And DCDS came out hot. The speed of their front line was evident from the beginning and it forced the Lady Pioneers to find their balance quickly. Unfortunately, the team was still dragging from the bus ride, and DCDS snuck home two goals in the first quarter. Another in the early part of the second, gave DCDS a 3-0 lead heading into the halftime break. Fingers were not pointed; players did not turn on each other in that halftime huddle. Rather, they looked each other in the eye, and with unspoken words told their teammates, “I got you; you give your all, I will give my all; however this match ends up, you are my sister and we are all right.” With steely resolve and determination, the team played hard-nosed field hockey. They never stopped running, even when the clock was running down. After DCDS put another trio of goals in the net in the third quarter, the task became overwhelming. There was a reason DCDS had been given the three-seed in the State Tournament and they were confirming why. As the clock ticked toward zero in the final frame, girls hustled, tussled and busted their tails trying to find the answer to the day. It did not come in the form of a goal, as the result was a 6-0 DCDS win. The answer was, “I got you; you give your all, and I will give my all; even though we lost, you are my sister and MOST IMPORTANTLY, we are all right!” Until Tuesday night, EGR Field Hockey had not lost since September 14- thirty-seven days with eight victories and three ties along the way. The Lady Pioneers finish the 2024 campaign with 10 wins, 7 losses and 3 ties for their record. And an OK Conference Championship. And they finished as one of the top eight teams of the State of Michigan Division 2. Congratulations on a fantastic season!