The stands were filled last evening at the Greater Richmond Convention Center as action in pool play resumed in the U-19 National Indoor Tournament, one of four field hockey tournaments which were being held in the same facility over the three-day weekend.
The reduced-side variation of the game, played on a surface roughly the size of a basketball court, is a proving ground for the younger field hockey players, having to make decisions and execute skills in a compact space.
Your Founder has seen a number of impressive sides in the indoor space over the years. But last evening, I saw an indoor game involving a team which has been well-known for producing and training impressive players and teams.
Yep, I’m writing about the W.C. Eagles club side.
Since their incorporation in the mid-2000s, the club has put some outstanding players on the indoor court and outdoor pitch. The Eagles are one of the only field hockey clubs in America to own its own clubhouse, one which has an indoor court and training facility as well as an outdoor water-based turf.
Between the infrastructure and the training of former U.S. men’s national team head coach Richard Kentwell and former China international Jun Kentwell, they have created a European-style hockey club which dominates most domestic competitions it enters.
For the 2026 National Indoor Tournament’s U-19 division, the Eagles entered 11 teams, including a U-16 side. The club’s “ace up the sleeve” team, however, is the W.C. Eagles Diamond team.
The Diamond team is a team with quick players from the best school teams in America, such as Pottstown Hill School (Pa.), VIllanova Academy of Notre Dame de Namur (Pa.), and Boiling Springs (Pa.). They don’t float into space: they seemingly appear out of thin air, framing the goal and putting the ball unerringly into the cage.
But it’s not important only to watch the team, but to listen. You don’t hear the same kind of sounds when the players on this team address the ball and propel it up the court. It isn’t a flat cracking noise like other teams, but when the Diamonds play, the stick-on-ball sound sounds like a spoon mixing a milkshake. Passes are crafted with soft hands, with majestic and intentional touches.
This W.C. Diamond team plays the game of field hockey like Northwestern’s women’s lacrosse team when it comes to how the pace of play meets the speed of thought. If a player sees an opening, the pass is instantaneous. Shooters may address shots from what others may view as a poor-percentage angle, but their skill and acumen allows them to find the back of the goal frame.
In 34 years of observing live field hockey, I haven’t seen anything like it.
W.C. Eagles has had a number of fine players who have represented the club over the years, including hundreds of collegiate players, dozens of national-team callups, and some Olympians. Their alumnae list reads like a Who’s-Who in American field hockey — Katie Gerzabek, Erin Matson, Meredith Sholder, Ryleigh Heck, Lauren Wadas, Hope Rose, Beth Yeager, Ashley Sessa, and Reese D’Ariano.
Thanks to these players, W.C. Eagles teams have won an emperor’s share of pool championships over the years. With their success has come criticism about the volume of their scoring over the years, but it is the same kind of criticisms which have been leveled against the best American field hockey programs over the years, such as Voorhees Eastern (N.J.), Emmaus (Pa.), Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.), and others who have attained a similar level of excellence.
I’ve never been one to criticize a team for their excellence, given the fact that there are other sports out there who have their own issues with runaway scores, such as a girls’ basketball playoff game in Illinois recently in which the final score was 105-2.
But in the format of this tournament, holding back on scoring is not a percentage play. This tournament is set up almost like the World Cup used to be in the 70s and early 80s, with two rounds of pool play — one which has a number of four-team pools, and the close of the tournament having three-team “tiers” which determine a divisional winner.
That led to a situation in one of the pool this weekend in Richmond. More on that tomorrow.