For years former NMH Girls Varsity Head Coach Craig Hefner called on other NEPSUL schools to create opportunities for girls to play. 2019 may be, finally, the year when girls ultimate gains momentum in the league.
This winter NMH hosted a girls clinic, and two of the three coaches at the Hotchkiss winter clinic were female club players.
Saturday April 16, was the first time since 2004 that a girls ultimate game was played in the state of Connecticut with the Choate and Hotchkiss girls combining to play Miss Porters. Choate coach Jen Huddleston, a long-time club and summer league player, is also the mother of two girls who have played ultimate at Choate, and has been looking for ways to build interest at her school. Dave Thompson, Hotchkiss head coach, has also been trying to bring more girls to the sport; although Hotchkiss has had a co-ed team almost every season for twenty years, there have never been enough girls for a team. On the other hand, for almost 15 years, Miss Porters has fielded the only girls team in the state, which means that they drive a great deal to the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for games.
One such event was on April 20, when Williston Northampton hosted the First Annual Wildcat Invitational, with a mix of seven public and NEPSUL schools, including NMH, MacDuffie, and a combination Williston-Deerfield girls team. Combining numbers seems to be the way to go; this is the second such year that these schools have joined together in order to be able to play girls games.
Plans are in the works for the NEPSUL tournament to have a girls division in the spring of 2020 – let us know if you’d like suggestions for growing girls ultimate at your school!