Goalie Melanie Schwimmer was the toast of the Bishop\u2019s field hockey team after she withstood the rigors of defending one-on-one against La Jolla High\u2019s shooters in a shootout that resulted in a nail-biter 5-4 win over their rivals at home recently.
\n“This is the first time we\u2019ve beaten La Jolla in a while,” said the tall, smiling Schwimmer, right after the game. “They beat us two times in (the Western) league last year. We haven\u2019t beaten them in a while.” A teammate chimed in: “They\u2019re really good.”
\nCoach Gary Hendrickson\u2019s Lady Knight team isn\u2019t too shabby itself, ranked third in Division 1, having won 18 of 22 matches at this writing. The Knights won the rare shootout, after a nerve-wracking 10-minute overtime of 7-versus-7 on the Bishop\u2019s turf prolonged the 0-0 tie. (Teams field 11 players each during regular play.) Senior captain Sarah Mischel set up Lila Browne\u2019s go-ahead goal in the shootout against Viking goalie Bridget Ballo, who as Schwimmer\u2019s counterpart played a heck of a game, too.
\nIn all, it took Bishop\u2019s beyond the initial five-shot penalty phase, to Mischel\u2019s and Browne\u2019s additional tries on the team\u2019s sixth and seventh shot attempts.
\nEarlier, senior Hana Belmonte-Ryu rifled a hit through the opposing goalie\u2019s legs for a score. Mischel, Hendrickson\u2019s first designated shooter, also scored to lead off the penalty phase.
\n“We work well together,” said senior forward Andrea Contreras of the squad. “We back each other up.”
\nAshley Jay, another of the Lady Knights\u2019 seven seniors who was serenaded on her 18th birthday after the win, said, “I\u2019m the oldest one on the team. I\u2019m the team mom,” as she put her arm around teammate Marley Meyer in a motherly gesture. The septuplet of seniors\u2014there were only three on last year\u2019s squad\u2014said they build family through sleepovers, where they eat “lots of pizza and lots of junk food,” and through contributing each player\u2019s “hype” music, which goes through Meyer\u2019s phone.
\nFavorite hype songs include “Flawless” and “Around the World” by Beyonce. Pizza faves range from Mischel\u2019s choice of vegetarian to Belmonte-Ryu\u2019s feta cheese with spinach.
\nKeona Lee, the defense\u2019s sweeper–“She has played all but five minutes of every game as a sophomore, junior, and now a senior,” interjected her coach\u2014had a unique way of describing her “very unified” team: “We\u2019re very open-minded. Everyone, including the younger players, has an equal say.” Said Hendrickson, “Unity and goodness (characterize his players). They\u2019re very kind. They support one another.”
\nSchwimmer, the goalie, talked about the intersection of math and field hockey: “A lot of what I\u2019m thinking about in goal is about spacing–math and angles. I work with our defense, which has been great this year.
\n“What I like about both (math and her sport) is you implement angles and speed in games.”
\nLee, a four-year starter, like Mischel a package of dynamite at 5-feet 3-inches tall, shares a pretty rare story for your garden variety field hockey player. On her 16th birthday, she attended a Metallica concert at Petco Park and got pulled up on stage by Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. As he stood behind her, she got to play drums “in front of 64,000 people” on the song “Seek and Destroy\u2019 a great song for defense,” Lee smiled.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Goalie Melanie Schwimmer was the toast of the Bishop\u2019s field hockey team after she withstood the rigors of defending one-on-one against La Jolla High\u2019s shooters in a shootout that resulted in a nail-biter 5-4 win over their rivals at home recently. “This is the first time we\u2019ve beaten La Jolla in a while,” said the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Bishop's field hockey stick together on and off field","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}