Stanford Field Hockey & Us
A few days ago, I found out that Stanford University is going to cut 11 varsity sports from its athletics program. Unfortunately, one of the sports that are being cut is field hockey. As many of you know, my blog is mainly focused on my journey as a field hockey player; my attempts to introduce this sport into our high school here in California and go beyond!
Speaking of California, we used to have only four colleges that had the Women’s Field Hockey Team and play in the D1 league. A year and a half back, the University of Pacific terminated their Field Hockey program due to budget cuts ($1 million deficit). While we are not recovered from that loss, this news from Stanford Administration surprised all of us!
Now this leaves only 2 colleges that offer varsity team for field hockey. And that’s the problem! This is going to cause a huge setback in the exposure of field hockey here in California. This may even cause UC Berkley and UC Davis (the other two colleges which offer this sport in D1 league) to close their field hockey programs. Stanford college is setting a wrong precedent here!
A Stanford field hockey alumni and dear coach of mine, Elise Ogle has started a petition to save field hockey at Stanford. This petition has lots of information on what you can do to save Stanford Field Hockey. This petition has so far received more than 15,000+ signatures. Let us put all our efforts into saving this program and ecosystem around it. Your few minutes can make wonders. Together we can make it happen!