Vikings field hockey team making strides
Girls improving in program’s third season
BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer

JEFF GRANIT staff Sara Steepy (r) is among the returning players who have helped the South Brunswick field hockey program continue to progress in just its third year as a varsity sport.

Most high school field hockey teams wouldn’t consider a 2-10-1 record anything to get excited about.

But at South Brunswick High School, it’s reason for celebration.

See, the Vikings’ girls field hockey team is in just its third year as an official varsity sport, and after failing to win a game their first two years, they’ve posted two victories this season.

The Lady Vikings lost all their games in 2002, their inaugural season, and then dropped every game last year except their final contest, in which they tied with Monroe. Even that was reason to celebrate.

South Brunswick and Monroe tied again, 1-1, on Sept. 14 of this season, and two weeks later, on Sept. 27, the Vikings made history when they beat Piscataway 1-0 in overtime for the program’s first victory ever.

Then, Oct. 14, they scored their second win with another 1-0 thriller over Piscataway, this time in regulation.

“We’ve seen improvement each year and we finally posted our first win. It was really exciting,” said head coach Danielle Matlack, who helped start the program. “We knew it was coming. We’ve played a lot of one-goal games all year and we knew we were going to break through sooner or later.”

But the improvement was obvious even before it showed up in the Vikings’ won-lost record.

“Being such a new program, we don’t really go by wins and losses. We look at other things,” Matlack explained. “Like, our first year we had 70 goals scored against us. Our second season that number went down to 54, and as of the other day [following a 3-0 loss to East Brunswick on Monday], we had given up 21 goals this season.”

That’s 21 goals in 13 games. Before the East Brunswick loss, it was 18 goals in 12 games, an average of 1.5 goals against per game, a testament to the Vikings’ much-improved defense.

“Most of our losses have been 1-0 and 2-1 games,” Matlack noted.

Even the South Brunswick offense has shown improvement this year, even if the Vikings aren’t scoring as much as they would like.

“Offensively, we’re there. We’re moving up and down the field with other teams, which is different from the past couple of years,” Matlack said. “We’re just not getting shots off in the circle. We’re doing all the right things. Now we just have to find a way to score.”

One player who has is senior midfielder Marissa Mangual, who scored the overtime goal in South Brunswick’s milestone first win over Piscataway. In fact, Mangual is one of five seniors who have been with the program since its inception. Katie Vetere (another midfielder), forward Abby Dredge, defender Kristen Bondi and back Maggie Schinder are the others. Mangual, Vetere, Dredge and Bondi also serve as captains.

Meanwhile, other key players include juniors Megan Rodriguez at sweeper, back Sara Steepy, forward Jackie Nimon, goalkeeper Alicia Langone, and senior forward Kristen Majewski, who’s been with the team the last two seasons.

Jackie Abdalla, another junior in her first year with the team, plays the back, while sophomore midfielders Courtney Stephens and Samantha Cohen, and freshman forward Jen Sico have also provided solid play. So has backup goalie Marci Winiarzi, another sophomore, who has seen action.

Stephens is one of the team’s top scorers with two goals and an assist, including the game winner against Piscataway last week. She’s one of several young players on the roster who should give the Vikings a bright future.

“We have 56 kids in the program,” Matlack said. “This year, we added a freshman team and we also added a middle school team. So we’re starting to build.

“Plus, our JV team has won four games, so they’re competitive, and our freshman team is 3-0-1. So, we have some talent coming up the next few years.”

Not bad for a program that didn’t even get off the ground until 2000.

“We were just sitting around the office one day and there was an old field hockey stick in the athletic director’s office,” Matlack, a physical education teacher who also coaches the SBHS softball team, said. “That’s how got we got the idea, and we wanted to see how many people would be interested in playing.

“So, we started a little club just to see what kind of interest there’d be, basically, and we’ve had a good response every year. We had about 45 girls come out the first couple of years, then 50, and now we’re up to 56.”

It remained a club sport the first two years — “Very informal, playing maybe once a week,” Matlack noted — but by the third year, 2002, girls field hockey became an official varsity sport.

It’s been growing ever since. And improving.

Going into Wednesday’s game with Old Bridge, the Vikings still had four regular-season games remaining, in addition to the GMC tournament, which begins on Tuesday.

But whatever happens the rest of the way, the South Brunswick girls field hockey program already has reason to celebrate.

“Our performance this year showed up,” Matlack said. “We took a big step.”