Field Hockey on Fire
Renewed focus, unbridled passion and strong culture help Duke field hockey set a new course
Meredith Rieder, GoDuke The Magazine
This story originally appeared in the October 2023 edition of GoDuke The Magazine
Duke field hockey is playing white hot, bleeding Duke Blue and living green. The second-ranked Blue Devils, sporting a 14-2 overall record, put together a record 11-game win streak and currently sit in a tie at the top of the ACC with a perfect 5-0 mark. And they do it all while personifying what it means to be a Duke student-athlete.
This team loves one another, and they love Duke. They each approach hockey with an unbridled passion that carries over to their extracurricular activities.
Senior captain Piper Hampsch is the chair of the ACC’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) while junior Grace Norair is the vice president of Duke SAAC. Senior Alayna Burns spearheads sustainability efforts within Duke Athletics and captain Barb Civitella was part of the CAPE program as she eyes a career in medicine.
Junior Issy Carey spent her summer with the Duke men’s basketball creative team and classmate Shelby Bumgarner is pursuing her dream of working in sports media as an intern with Duke’s Blue Devil Network. The list goes on and on, but there isn’t enough room within these pages to explain why the Blue Devils are unstoppable on and off the turf and how they do it all with palpable positive energy.
Ranked 20th in the National Field Hockey Coaches Association preseason rankings after a 7-11 season in 2022, Duke is amidst one of the best turnarounds in program history. In the previous three seasons combined, Duke went 1-17 against ACC foes and gave up an average of 15 goals in league play. This season, Duke is 5-0 in league action and has given up just three goals.
Those seasons weren’t easy for the coaches or the players, but they were an instrumental part of getting them to this very moment — No. 2 in the coaches poll and No. 1 in the RPI with room to grow.
The lack of success on the field wasn’t due to a lack of talent or effort in head coach Pam Bustin’s eyes. It was the ability to put it all together and overcome adversity that was missing.
“The losing part isn’t something we’re excited about or we’re proud of, but every day (last season) I left practice the same way I’m feeling now. That team brought it,” said Bustin. “Every day at practice they worked to get better, but we needed more focus.”
People might not like to hear how Duke’s turnaround happened, only because it isn’t the instant fix many desire. The Blue Devils didn’t flip a switch and suddenly win 11 straight games. The journey started in the spring of 2022 following a 6-11 year in 2021.
“(That spring) we had to work on things off the field,” Bustin said. “We had to work on how we were approaching each practice, what we were doing when we were away from the team, what we were doing to improve our individual confidence and skills and basic skills and connection. That takes a lot of time, and it does translate to the field, but we weren’t there yet on the field with those things (last year).”
I think the spring offseason was a real grind time for everyone to work on their individual skills and make sure they were at a great place.Piper Hampsch - Senior Captain & Goalkeeper
Comfortable with where they were with their locker room culture, the Blue Devils struggled through a 7-11 season and once again went winless in league action.
Five of the setbacks came by a single goal, including three in ACC play. The Blue Devils outshot 11 of their opponents in 2022, including in the pair of narrow losses to Wake Forest. Duke won the penalty corner battle as well in 11 outings but finished the season scoring on just 7.2 percent of those opportunities.
Penalty corners on both ends of the field were one of the areas the coaches identified in need of improvement as Duke turned its focus to basic on-field skills — everything from trapping and receiving a pass to demanding the ball.
“Honestly, (last spring) was a process of identifying areas of the game that we had to get better,” Bustin said. “For us to have a better possession game we had to have better possession skills. You have to trap the ball. You have to push the ball. You have to sweep the ball. You have to be accurate. You have to ask for the ball. We wanted all of that stuff to become ingrained in them.”
The work on the penalty corners paid off as the Blue Devils have already scored 20 goals on 81 opportunities, a 24 percent success rate. Inside the defensive circle, Duke has held teams to just four penalty corners per game and has only given up 16 goals overall compared to the 34 after 15 games last season.
Last spring, Mondays were skill repetition days and Wednesdays focused on the tactical game when the coaches put out a tactical problem and gave the team principles to focus on to solve the problem. It was up to the Blue Devil players to find the answer and to do so through open and honest communication on the field.
Those moments were where their work on team culture the previous offseason and their current efforts of skill improvement collided. Could they have uncomfortable conversations and hold each other accountable on the field and understand none of it was not personal?
“I think the spring offseason was a real grind time for everyone to work on their individual skills and make sure they were at a great place,” said senior captain and goalkeeper Piper Hampsch. “I did a ton of work with (assistant coach) Jess (Jecko) just to try to get my goalkeeping where it could be. It wasn’t as a team player or a defender, just straight save the ball and don’t let it in the cage and I think that was a really good practice.”
Hampsch’s work has paid off as she sports a career-best 1.02 goals against average, which currently ranks fifth in Duke single-season history. She has a career-high five shutouts and is nearing the No. 5 spot on the Duke career saves chart.
“We had to get on the field and challenge the cultural work we did,” Bustin said. “Can we have confrontation on the field? Can I talk to you in a way that might not be comfortable? So that was Wednesdays when we gave them tactical problems to solve. And they did it. Then the next day was competition. Make them uncomfortable. Compete with one another and see how we react to adversity.”
The challenges presented to the Blue Devils in spring practices set them up to manage similar situations this fall. They’ve fallen behind in the first minute of play only to come back for a late win. At Boston College, they allowed a tying goal minutes before the final whistle but rallied in overtime. In a hard-fought battle at No. 8 Virginia, the team rallied from a goal down late in the fourth quarter and emerged victorious again in overtime, something the Blue Devils have done four times this season. In fact, nine of Duke’s 14 wins are by a single goal, a sign of the grit that exists in this team.
Following the thrilling overtime win against the Cavaliers, Duke circled up for its tradition of breaking down the game one-by-one. Every player gets an opportunity to share her thoughts and recognize a player or a specific play.
When the imaginary microphone reached veteran Mary Harkins, she implored her teammates to look at the scoreboard. With the conviction only a seasoned leader has, Harkins intensely reminded the team that it had faced nearly every situation possible, and they’ve fought through those moments and they’re only getting started.
That postgame tradition of allowing each player to have a voice and celebrate one another perfectly encapsulates the Blue Devils. Done sporadically during the 2022 season as the team searched for positives in some disappointing setbacks, it has developed into a way to settle the win or loss in a team-first manner.
“I think it’s a great setting for us to just get anything on our mind off and applaud certain players who had a solid performance or people who may not have scored the goals but had a great performance the whole game,” said Miller. “It’s just a way to kind of settle ourselves after the win or the loss and to refocus us on the next game because every opponent we’re playing this season is difficult.”
While the Blue Devils are taking the season one game at a time off the field, they are preparing to take the world by storm. Their passion for hockey carries through into their everyday lives and nobody personifies that more than Burns, who recently was a finalist for the Green Sports Award presented by BBC Sport.
Last spring while Burns and the Blue Devils were grinding through spring practices, Burns also was leading the “Devils Doing Good Shoe Drive.” With Burns empowering her fellow Blue Devils to join the initiative, Duke collected 591 shoes in total. Just over 300 were recycled at Nike Cary via the Nike Grind Program, which repurposes end-of-life shoes into various new materials. The other 200-plus were donated to Fleet Feet Durham via the MORE Foundation Group, which distributes shoes to developing countries while funding conservation and agricultural projects in Ghana in the process.
"After seeing so many shoes discarded over the seasons at Duke, we tested a solution to save our shoes from the trash," Burns said. "Thanks to the engaging team of student-athletes and collaborative staff of Duke Athletics, the Shoe Drive became a department-wide initiative."
Duke field hockey recently hosted its own “Bleed Blue, Live Green” game, encouraging fans to bring used athletic equipment and apparel to give it a second life at the Boys and Girls Club. With Burns’ leadership and connections with Sustainable Duke, the Blue Devils also provided education and a fun-filled halftime game to teach fans in attendance about sorting items to the landfill, compost or recycling. Duke collected a host of field hockey sticks, shoes and clothes for the local Boys and Girls Club of Durham.
Additionally, the Blue Devils’ postgame tailgate was a zero-waste function thanks to Burns’ efforts to make sure all the items were compostable and were disposed of correctly.
While Burns is enthusiastic about climate change and puts forth immense effort into educating others and making a difference, it is the support of her teammates that is equally inspiring. They are intentional about using reusable materials in the locker room and most importantly they celebrate each other and are invested learning about one another on and off the field.
“It’s crazy how as soon as you walk off this field no stats, no position, no matter how many minutes you’re playing we’re all on an equal playing field outside of Jack Katz Stadium,” Hampsch said. “We’re great friends. We all want to know how things are going academically. We want to know how things are going with extracurriculars. We want to help each other with our professional lives after school. It is so close.”
This camaraderie has allowed them to find success on the field. The No. 2 ranking is exciting, but the Blue Devils are not resting on their laurels. They’ll be back in the proverbial boat every morning all rowing in the same direction — eight miles down Tobacco Road to Chapel Hill where North Carolina will serve as hosts for the 2023 NCAA Championship.
“It’s exciting to see all of our hard work pay off in that ranking,” Miller said. “It’s something we see at the beginning of the week but then forget about by the time practice starts on Tuesday. If we dwell on it too much, we’re going to lose sight of what our goal is, which isn’t to be the top-ranked team at the beginning of the season but to be the top-ranked team at the end of the season.”
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