On an oddly warm and humid afternoon, the Deerfield JV field hockey team took on St. Paul’s, and came away with a disappointing loss after a hard-fought 50 minutes of play. We let St. Paul’s catch us early in the game in a moment of disorganization, and they popped one in. (Our team is realizing that we need to be on it, coherent, and organized from the get-go, rather than arrive at that place of togetherness five minutes after play has begun. A difficult lesson to learn the hard way.) It was a tough loss, since the remainder of play felt pretty evenly matched. We saw great stamina, reliability and cool-headed play from senior captain and goalie Niyafa Boucher ’18: through many heart-stopping moments, she kept us in the game. We held our own on six defensive corners, but unfortunately, by contrast, the offense couldn’t quite put it together to turn any of our six offensive corners into a goal. All in all, a learning day for the girls, a hard-fought contest (that in some ways felt lie a tie), and a long day on the road!