You would expect that the major field hockey stories coming out of the 2025 domestic season would surround the play of U.S. women’s national teams at various levels.
But I think the biggest story was the rising number of what we could term “Americans Abroad.” More U.S. players than ever before are playing in pro and club leagues across the globe.
It all started with the fact that Ashley Hoffman and Jenny Rizzo played in the inaugural season of the women’s Hockey India League, a four-team circuit which crowned its champion in late January. Hoffman and Rizzo played for the Shrachi Rahr Bengal Tigers, which didn’t make the grand final. Hoffman eventually moved to play in Argentina for Bango Provincia in Buenos Aires.
There are other players who are competing in the Hoofdklasse, the first division of the women’s field hockey league. Sanne Caarls, Kelsey Bing, and Julianna Tornetta. But also in the league, playing for the Amsterdam Hockey and Bandy Club, is teenage sensation Reese D’Ariano.
D’Ariano, a home-schooled player from east-central Pennsylvania, had herself a year, starting with being the leading scorer in the Rohrmax Cup, a prestigious indoor field hockey championship. During the year, she got her first cap for the senior women’s national team. It was the first of 13 caps for the senior team this season. Importantly, she also got her first senior national team goals wearing a U.S. kit, and she followed that up in the fall for a goal wearing the black and red of Amsterdam.
The U.S. women’s team, as a whole, has been working on incremental progress on the road to Los Angeles 2028. The side managed to gain World Cup qualification by finishing second at the 2025 Women’s Pan American Cup. That’s because Argentina, the team that won the tournament, had already qualified for the World Cup by virtue of being the highest-placed team from the 2024-25 FIH Pro League.
The United States junior national team, with some players coming off their collegiate seasons, won their pool in the 2025 Junior World Cup and took a top-four seed into the knockout round. The U.S. team, led by Alana McVeigh on attack and Josie Hollamon on defense, were a team nobody wanted to face, and they were able to parlay their skills into a ()th-place finish in this tournament.
There was a not-insignificant youth influence on that U.S. junior national team. Many of the players on the team were blue-chip prospects that came out of the U.S. system, playing on both top clubs and top scholastic teams. Many of those scholastic teams met each other in the fifth iteration of the National High School Invitational. The tournament weekend yielded a number of great moments and superb goals.
Interestingly, a number of the dream matchups between some of the best teams in the country were not at the NHSI, this year. A number of top sides scheduled each other this season in a round-robin format which resembled a World Cup soccer group phase.
Chief among the teams scheduling each other were Pottstown Hill School (Pa.), Villanova Academy of Notre Dame de Namur (Pa.), Newtown Square Episcopal Academy (Pa.), and Malvern Villa Maria (Pa.). They played a number of contests against each other and none of the four escaped undefeated.
But coming out ahead amongst the four teams in this unofficial intramural competition was Academy of Notre Dame, which won the PAISAA championship while winning its third game of the season over Episcopal Academy.
Now, you’ll notice that one of the four teams we mentioned in our mini-World Cup group isn’t a PAISAA team, as Villa Maria plays in the PIAA. Villa Maria won the District 1-AAA title and came into the state tournament as one of the favorites in a loaded upper half of the bracket. Villa Maria rode the scoring prowess of senior Caitlin Connell and the support of excellent teammates into a semifinal match against Emmaus (Pa.).
Emmaus, and 50-year head coach Susan Butz-Stavin, were on a mission for 2025. A year ago, they appeared to be on a good run in the state tournament until Connell slashed in a backhander in overtime to end their season. But in 2025, Emmaus was able to get its own overtime goal to get by Villa Maria and make the state final.
In that game, the opposition was Doylestown Central Bucks West (Pa.). The team was coached by Lori Ierubino, who scored a goal against Emmaus in the 1994 state final. And as it turned out, an important goal as scored by her daughter Aida in that final. However, the Hornets were able to turn up the pressure on attack, and came out with a 3-2 win.
In that game, head coach Susan Butz-Stavin was able to extend her national record for scholastic field hockey coaching wins to an astounding 1,120. With the start of the scholastic season, she became one of only a handful of head coaches to be on the sidelines for a 50th season.
Butz-Stavin is not the only person who enjoyed a rarefied record in 2025. Caitlin Connell became one of about a dozen players to have ever scored 200 goals in a career, and wound up tied for sixth all-time in that statistic. Also, Adelaide Minnella of North Caldwell West Essex (N.J.) and Kira Trader of Yorktown Tabb (N.J.) became part of only about a group of 15 players who recorded 100 goals and 100 assists in a career.
Trader became part of the group because of a senior season in which she recorded an eye-popping 56 assists, which ties for the single-season record. But none of her helpers were more important than the diagonal pass four minutes from the end of regulation in the VHSL Class 3 state final against Poquoson (Va.), when her slicing diagonal ball found teammate Kennedy Parlett at the goal line for the tip-in. The goal gave the Tigers their 113th straight victory, which is only 11 from tying the national record for consecutive victories.
There were other notable milestones in 2025. One is that Emmaus (Pa.) extended its mark for consecutive PIAA District 11 championship to 37 with a 1-0 win over Allentown Parkland (Pa.).
Another is that Cherry Hill Camden Catholic (N.J.) won the inaugural South Jersey Tournament of Champions, a tournament on par with the various single-elimination FA Cup-style tournaments that occur in the Garden State in October.
In addition, a number of scholastic teams won their first terminal championships in 2025:
San Diego Mount Carmel (Calif.), CIF-San Diego Division 1
Danbury Immaculate (Conn.), CIAC Class S
New Hampton (N.H.), NEPSAC Class C
Bedford (N.H.), NHIAA Division I
The Pennington (N.J.) School, NJISWAA Prep B
Windsor (N.Y.), NYSPHSAA Class A
Duncannon Susquenita (Pa.), PIAA Class A
Gloucester (Va.), VHSL Class 4
Also of note, when it comes to U.S. scholastic tournaments, is the fact that the state of Michigan sanctioned its first championship under the Michigan High School Athletic Association. That tournament was won by Ann Arbor Pioneer (Mich.), which is actually the 31st state tournament the program has won under various sanctioning organizations over the 45-year history of the program.
The collegiate season was defined in large part by a late-season controversy in Division I, when your defending Division I NCAA champs, Northwestern, were ranked only fifth by the NCAA Tournament Committee on Selection Sunday. That meant that this loaded Wildcats side would have to play on the road for the tournament’s duration.
Northwestern, angrier than hornets in a hive, went on a mission. They went to the Charlottesville regional, and beat Miami to make it to the Final Four before taking on the University of North Carolina in the semifinal round.
In a game worthy of a grand final, UNC took a 2-0 lead in nine minutes, but the Wildcats used their speed and skill to pull back level in the final two minutes of regulation on a goal frim Ilse Tromp. That set up a dramatic overtime session which eventually ended with Grace Schulze banking the ball into the goal off a UNC defender to win the game.
The Division I final was to be against Princeton University, which led the line for an Ivy League which this year became the biggest rival to the ACC/Big Ten duopoly. Princeton got by Harvard in its semifinal game — an oddity in itself. It has been some time since the Ivy League had two participants in the national semifinals in any NCAA sport.
In the championship game, Northwestern and Princeton played a defensive matchup which saw the teams play goalless hockey for the first 43 minutes. It took Beth Yeager, the Olympian, to break the deadlock on a penalty corner. But seven minutes later, Tromp made a hi-lo pass to Kate Janssen on the right wing, who deflected the ball in.
The teams would not score for the remainder of regulation. The teams went into extra time, and, fittingly, a Northwestern penalty corner would be the difference. In the 71st minute, Ilse Tromp fired in a dragflick off the Princeton goalkeeper’s pad, securing the third championship for Northwestern in the last five seasons.
Division II had a potentially awesome “grow the game” storyline, as Newberry College, a team out of South Carolina, aimed to become the southernmost field hockey team to win a national championship since 1981. Newberry built a roster from offshore as well as the transfer portal, welcoming some student-athletes from the shuttered Limestone College field hockey program. Shippensburg, however, ended the Wolves’ aspirations with a 3-2 overtime win.
In Division III, the championship was determined by — what else? — overtime. Tufts was able to take a 2-1 win thanks to an overtime goal from the Jumbos’ ace Hannah Biccard. On the play, Camille Clarke fired a shot on goal, which Biccard was able to deflect on the way to goal.
Tufts, a team out of the New England Small College Athletic Conference, was one of an astounding eight NESCAC teams to make the 28-team Division III bracket. Now, since only Tufts made it through to the last four, that meant that Middlebury’s string of seven straight Division III championships was broken.
Elsewhere in collegiate field hockey, Syracuse won the New York State Club Field Hockey League title, Virginia won the National Field Hockey League fall tournament, Georgia won the NFHL Challenge Cup, and the University of California, San Diego won the Western Collegiate Field Hockey Conference.
