Brave, tough, fun: My weekend with my field hockey teammates.

The panel discussion during the 50 Years of Field Hockey celebration. I’m at the far right, showing off my favorite t-shirt (from the 2021 National Championship, duh). From left, Associate Field Hockey Coach Georgia Holland, Lisa McCarthy ‘16, Maddie Zimmer ‘24, Natalie Beckerman ‘91.

I couldn’t remember when I’d been this nervous.

I was one of three alums asked to be on a panel during the recent weekend-long celebration of 50 years of Northwestern field hockey.

For perspective, the fourth player on the panel was Maddie Zimmer, a current senior and an incredible athlete who is also — oh yeah — an Olympian.

For more perspective, the girls playing this season are Team 50. Currently they are undefeated at 17-0, have clinched the Big Ten season title and are ranked number one in the country. Their fourth trip in a row to the national championship tournament is right around the corner.

My first team was Team 4. Or maybe we were Team 3. We didn’t count such things back then, just a few years after Title IX had begun to make a way for the growth of women’s sports and before field hockey was an NCAA sport. That happened in 1982, two field hockey seasons after I graduated.

Team 5 (maybe?), fall of 1979.

I was the very definition of a walk-on: I had loved field hockey in high school and wanted to play at Northwestern, so I called to find out when practices started and showed up. Most of the women on my team were like that; we had only two (partial) scholarship athletes and Marilyn and Sharon were also softball players. I found out at the reunion that our goalie my freshman year — a year ahead of me and the wonderful heart of our team — hadn’t even played field hockey before college and signed up because Northwestern sent her a letter asking if she wanted to play (the other option in the letter was joining the marching band — could I make this up?).

What could I possibly have to share with the hundred or so NU field hockey alumni — the current team was there, too — gathered in a beautiful lakeside room that morning?

As it turns out, we had much more in common than I thought.

Everyone on the panel remembered hanging out with beloved teammates, tough practices and similar rivalries (Iowa, always, though now Michigan and UNC are circled on the calendar, too).  

But it went beyond just happy memories.

As I think about everyone I met that weekend, including the amazing current players and coaches, I realized there’s a throughline from me and my teammates (the oldest alums at the gathering) right up to Maddie and her teammates. There’s a spirit we all share, an understanding that people who haven’t been part of this program might not have.

We are confident and competitive — there were no shrinking violets in that room, though lots of different personalities, as on any highly functional team.

We know how to step up to a challenge. We don’t complain.

We put in the work, whether at field hockey and academics during college or, later, running global customer support operations for IHG Hotels and Resorts. Natalie Beckerman ’91, who holds that impressive job, was the alum closest in age to me on the panel.

We are doctors, lawyers, leaders of government agencies and tech companies, entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, pilots, journalists.

So I wasn’t surprised at all to see that when someone got a cut during the alumni game Sunday morning, one of her teammates — a dermatologist, apparently — had skin glue in her medical bag in the car and took care of it right away.

I also wasn’t surprised to hear that the brand-new Northwestern Athletic Director took some tough questions about equity and the future of the field hockey program from some of us at the meet-and-greet the first night. He probably thought he was just there for a quick beer.

With some of my teammates and other alums after the panel. Look at that glorious view of Lake Michigan — facilities are MUCH different from when I played.

Field hockey was foundational in my own professional life. It made me brave enough to step up to the leadership challenges I faced as one of few senior women in the newsroom when I was a newspaper editor and, later, to believe in myself enough to launch my own communications and fundraising strategy company.

On some level, we Northwestern field hockey players and alums understand each other. We know what it takes to compete every day at the highest level possible and, in whatever era we played, make the commitment to do our very best every chance we get.

And, as Lisa McCarthy ’16 pointed out during the panel discussion, we also know how to have a “bit of fun.” (She’s Irish and recently graduated from med school in Ireland after working in tech in San Francisco. See what I mean? Amazing.)

I think that’s what I remember most about my playing days, and what has warmed me in the days since our reunion, thinking about everyone I met and the connections we all still have to the game and that beautiful place.

We had so much fun. Together.