A different sport with sticks and balls is gearing up for its coming season this spring, as members of the Hillsborough Jr. Raiders Field Hockey Feeder Program gears up for its third year of outdoor play for area girls.
As baseball teams throughout the country get ready for the summer, Tara Romano, the program’s director, is working hard for a sport that’s only recently begun getting its hooks into girls as young as 5 or 6 years old.
“We did see a lot of girls last year coming from zero sport experience and they found a total love for the sport,” she said. “A lot of girls have made friendships through this program that they might not have made otherwise.”
For the uninitiated, field hockey can simplistically be described as a combination of soccer and hockey that has players using a stick to move and eventually shoot a ball into the opposing team’s goal.
The Hillsborough program started back in 2015 when then Girl Scout Emily Van Pelt began offering field hockey clinics as part of her Gold Award requirement. As those clinics gained traction and the community saw an interest in its youth, discussions surrounding a potential township league began to take shape.
Fast forward three years later and the Jr. Raiders’ field hockey outfit remains a unique characteristic of the township as the only functioning league for the sport in Somerset County.
In order to jump that hurdle, the program joined into a collaborative effort with the NJ/PA Field Hockey League, which is situated in Warren County.
Though many of the league’s teams are located in municipalities like Fords, Lebanon and Readington, Romano said the league was more than willing to coordinate travel dates with the Hillsborough teams and keep them playing close to the township.
Romano, whose daughter plays in the league and who herself played in high school, said the league has been a success as a feeder program, which encourages girls to join the middle school and high school teams. As such, the Hillsborough High School field hockey program provides special camps and clinics for the younger girls. Some of the schools’ players have also come on to help parent-coaches as assistants.
“We did have the ability to add a middle school team, so now the program is fluid from kindergarten to 12th grade,” Romano said. “Last year, the middle school team had a great season, so we’re now starting to see the fruits of our labor at that level.”
With an eye on possible expansions with more teams on the horizon, the recent announcement that an indoor and outdoor sports complex would be built in town has Romano wondering where the program will fit at the facility.
Described as a “multi-sport athletic facility designed to serve participants in sports leagues, skill-building clinics/camps, and competition as well as sports performance training, pay-to-play recreation experiences, and youth development activities” to be built next to Mountain View Park, the Apex Sports & Events complex was announced earlier this month as a potential boon for local sports programs.
The facility will feature three outdoor synthetic turf fields for sports like soccer, lacrosse, and football, while the indoor complex will be more for basketball, volleyball and futsal. Team-training areas will also be available.
Township officials said they worked with Apex to ensure the facility would be available to the community and the township’s youth first. One of the contemporary outdoor turf fields will provide 400 hours of reserved prime time for the Hillsborough Township Parks and Recreation Department.
With the recent announcement causing waves within the community, Romano said she hopes that the Jr. Raiders Field Hockey program will be able to utilize the facility.
“The first we found out about it was on Facebook, so I don’t know if we’ll have the ability to get space there periodically,” she said.
The Hillsborough Township Parks and Recreation Department currently allows the program to use lacrosse practice fields and the outfield of a softball field owned by the township for its practices and games.
“It’s a hope of ours, but we’re not sure if [the facility is] fashioned for field hockey.” Romano said.
Registration for the program is going on now, with early bird rates in effect until May 1. The program is open to residents in Hillsborough and surrounding municipalities. The season will start during the second to last week of August, with regulation games starting on the first weekend of September.
For more information, visit www.jrraiders.org or email Romano and her co-director Danielle Citarella at [email protected].