On Wednesday December 13th, the Baldwin Field Hockey team gathered at Lenox Elementary School for the monthly Board Of Education Meeting. Former, current and future Baldwin Varsity Field Hockey players all gathered with their parents to express their displeasure with the new turf field. They were concerned with the lines that would be placed on the new field, or rather, the lack thereof.
As the field hockey season came to a close, the team was informed that the highly anticipated turf field would not include the lines they need to play. In effect, the team would not be able to utilize the new field along with all the other fall sports. As of now, the field will only accommodate both soccer teams, girls lacrosse, boys lacrosse and football. When asked why field hockey had been excluded from this list Board of Education President Mary Jo O’Hagan responded that since the team doesn’t currently use the field to play, they hadn’t thought of adding them. President O’Hagan insisted that the issue was a simple oversight and that the larger issue at hand was the failed bond from earlier in the year. The board had planned to completely revamp all of Baldwin’s fields, but Baldwin voters hadn’t approved the bond necessary to fund that project. However this answer did not satisfy senior captain Celisa Benoit who took the mic to ask what the next steps were. Why couldn’t the field hockey lines just be added to the field which already had funding? Jasmin Tiong-Smith, her co-captain, agreed with this sentiment, stating that she “feels the board can’t pick and choose which sports get the resources they need to succeed”. One player, striker Megan Englehart, even referenced Title 9 in their speech, reminding the board that the field hockey team is one of three sports programs at Baldwin that doesn’t have a male team counterpart. and the program means so much to so many people. “We need those lines,” they said, “and we won’t stop until we get them.”
