When Jayne Giles joined Belfast’s new high school field hockey team in 1973, she and her teammates didn’t have time to worry about the competition or getting the right uniforms.
They were just focused on learning how to play the sport.
Like most of the other girls who joined the team, Giles, who was a senior, never saw field hockey played before signing up. The high school didn’t offer a fall sport for girls and added it because of Title IX, the federal law that ensured male and female athletes got equal opportunities. On Thursday, an alumni game will mark the team’s 50th anniversary.
The learning curve was tough, Giles said. After only a few weeks of sprinting drills, figuring out which side of the stick you’re allowed to hit the ball with and how high you’re supposed to hold the stick in the first place, the team was already in preseason games.
“We looked like a bunch of lemmings, I think,” Giles said, recalling an early scrimmage in Pittsfield. “If the ball went to the right, we went to the right, if the ball went to the left, the whole team went to the left, all chasing the same ball.”
The referee at the time ended up stopping the game and pulling the Belfast team aside to remind them that they were supposed to stay in their positions and play the lanes, Giles said.
The team’s first few games were a challenge. It didn’t help that they started the year wearing what were essentially basketball uniforms. Despite facing an uphill battle against a number of field hockey teams that were already established in the region, the team kept improving, said Karen Taylor, also a senior playing on the team that year.
Taylor remembers the “thrill” of playing under the lights at the Belfast Area High School football field, and the excitement that came from improving and growing as a team.
“We became a very close-knit team because we were trying to help each other out. We were really trying to put the effort in to learn the rules and learn the game,” Taylor said.
Although the team had no wins that first season, the last game of the year was a tie, putting the inaugural team’s record at 0-8-1.
“You would have thought we won the game, we were so excited,” Giles said.
Since those early days, Belfast field hockey has built a strong legacy with over 600 wins and multiple regional and state championship titles. Taylor and Giles attribute much of the team’s success to Coach Allen Holmes, who stayed with the team for 40 years, from its inception all the way to his retirement in 2012.
A community formed around the sport, with parents and local people paying more attention and more girls wanting to join the team, Taylor said. Years later, both she and Giles have had multiple family members go on to play field hockey for the high school, and generations of players have stayed in touch.
Holmes’ daughter, Jan Holmes-Jackson, played for the state champion team in 1989 and has coached the team since her father’s retirement. She even had the chance to coach her daughter when she played for the high school.
“We have a long history of field hockey in our family,” Holmes-Jackson said. “Belfast field hockey is in my blood.”
The team is celebrating its 50-year anniversary with the alumni game at the high school starting at 6 p.m. Thursday. Before the game, there will be a presentation on the history of the field hockey team in Belfast.
At least 16 of the 23 players from high school’s first team are expected to make appearances. Giles and Taylor have a deal that at least one of them has to score a goal during the game. It’ll be the first time Giles has played field hockey since college, she said, and she’s excited to play again with the people who paved the way for the sport’s long history in Belfast.
“We had to start somewhere, and we weren’t afraid to get out there and do it,” Giles said.
