Group of Youth Coaches Make Pitch To Add Field Hockey at Westhampton Beach Middle School

“The athletes are there.”

That was the message East Quogue parent Kate Turza had for the Westhampton Beach Board of Education when she spoke at Monday night’s meeting about the feasibility of adding field hockey as a sport offering for female students in the district.

For the past three years, Turza and two other parents — fellow East Quogue residents Jackie Trelease and Meaghan Moran — have been running a youth field hockey program open to elementary school students in Westhampton Beach and its feeder districts, East Quogue, Quogue and Remsenburg-Speonk, as well as East Moriches, in an effort to build momentum and gauge interest in the sport, and provide a pathway to adding it as a middle school sport in the district some time within the next two years.

They’ve had support from Westhampton Beach High School physical education teacher Katie Peters, as well as from the physical education teachers in several of the feeder districts, including East Moriches, Quogue and East Quogue, who have agreed to incorporate a unit on field hockey into their curriculum.

Turza is a mother of three children who are all actively involved in multiple youth sports, and she’s a board member of Southampton Town PAL. In that capacity, she’s organized and run town programs for both tackle and flag football, cheer and field hockey. Trelease played field hockey at Southampton High School and coached its varsity team for several years, while Moran, a Westhampton Beach Elementary School teacher, played field hockey at Shoreham-Wading River High School.

The effort to bring field hockey to Westhampton Beach began several years ago, when Trelease wrote a letter to the Board of Education in fall 2021 inquiring about what it would take to add the sport to the school’s list of offerings for female students. Westhampton Beach Superintendent of Schools Dr. Carolyn Probst and Athletic Director Jason Cohen told her at the time that the first step would be to prove there was sufficient interest within the community by building a youth program.

That’s what Trelease, Turza and Moran have done over the last few years, and they said it has been a success. More than 50 players signed up for a clinic in June 2022, and for a clinic in the spring of this year, there were more than 20 signed up within the first 24 hours that registration was open, Turza said. A total of 18 players in grades K-2 and 28 players in grades three through six signed up for a fall league in 2022, and a spring clinic in 2023 had 50 players from grades K-6. More wanted to sign up for that clinic, Turza said, but they had to cap the number at 50 for insurance purposes.

When she addressed the board during a public comment period on Monday night, Turza also pointed out the high number of female students going out for sports at the middle school level. A total of 40 seventh- and eighth-graders tried out for girls soccer this fall, and the team kept 26, and 35 girls tried out for tennis, with 21 making the team. Both of those teams carried more players than they needed to, in order to minimize the number of cuts they’d need to make.

Westhampton Beach is the only East End school without a field hockey program. East Hampton, Pierson, Southampton, Hampton Bays, Riverhead and Eastport-South Manor all have programs, and there are currently 37 programs in Suffolk County. ESM, coached by East Quogue resident Ann Naughton, added field hockey as a sport only within the last decade. The Sharks won the Suffolk County Class A Championship this fall.

Turza said that Cohen approached her and the coaches last week, proposing they run an intramural field hockey program for Westhampton Beach sixth-graders for the remainder of the fall, but Turza said she and the other youth coaches were hesitant to do that, concerned that it would not be an accurate gauge of interest because it would only be open to Westhampton Beach sixth-graders, and not sixth-graders from the feeder schools, and it would run after school until 4 p.m., a time that would require parents to pick their students up because the late bus does not run until 5 p.m.

Turza said they’d be interested in setting up an intramural program in the future, perhaps at a time when daylight savings and the weather is not a limiting factor.

At the meeting, Probst said that the district would not use potentially low numbers at an intramural program offered for Westhampton Beach sixth-graders this fall as a reason not to offer field hockey at the middle school level in the future.

“I’ve found all our conversations to be productive,” Probst said, after Turza finished speaking. “If the timing [for intramurals] is not perfect, we will sort that out, but in no way will the district use that information to say, never mind [to offering field hockey].”

Probst added that other parents have reached out to her as well expressing interest in having the sport added at the school.

Turza said that adding field hockey would give the district a chance to provide another opportunity for female students who are hungry to compete.

“As a proponent of team sports in our community, and having been an integral part of creating and sustaining the youth programs that serve Westhampton and its feeder districts, I strongly feel that adding another opportunity for athletes is the right move,” Turza said at the meeting. “Currently, in middle school, the male dominated sports outnumber the female sports by two,” she continued, referring to football and wrestling. “Over the past two winters, there were over 40 girls cut from middle school volleyball and basketball. Today, we had approximately 85 middle school girls try out for volleyball, which proves how many athletes we have. That’s amazing.

“Youth sports are proven to increase self confidence, personal growth, improved social skills, a sense of belonging, and achievement,” she continued. “We can all agree that the more opportunities that are presented to our girls in this community, the more we nurture their potential, ensuring a brighter, more equitable future for all.”