Lights out at field hockey game

By Isabella Ainsworth,
BlueDevilHUB.com Editor-in-Chief–

The lights were off. There was seven minutes and 50 seconds left in the Sept. 26 game, the Davis High varsity field hockey team was beating its opponent Pleasant Valley 4-0, still one goal away from its final score of 5-0, and the lights were off.

They had turned off, unexpectedly, in the middle of a play.

“At first it was scary,” junior and outside defender Grace Mariano said. “And then it was sort of funny. And then I felt like we kind of got disrespected a little bit.”

While some girls on the team thought it was fun for the lights to go off, it certainly did impact the game.

“I think it kind of disrupted the focus. We kind of messed around a lot when the lights were off,” senior and center forward Darby Maguire said.

Has this ever happened before?

“During a game? No, never,” head coach Sandie Marotti-Huckins said. “Us cleaning up and walking off, yes, but never during a game.”

Marotti-Huckins thinks that either they didn’t realize that the field hockey team had a game, or the lights weren’t set for long enough. Ultimately, she had to call the athletic director to turn the lights back on so that the teams could finish the match.

That the lights went off during a field hockey game and not a football game or another more widely watched sport brings into question equity of sports at DHS, and, more specifically, equity of women’s and men’s teams, as field hockey is an all-female sport at DHS. Perceived importance can be seen in the number of people in the stands for the game: there were only around 20 or so people in the stands for field hockey, while football games generally generate a much larger turnout.

While Mariano does not think that the turning off of lights was in any way intentional, she does admit that it would be far less likely to happen at a football game.

Although the team won the game, Marotti-Huckins thinks that they could have done better (if she gave the game a grade, she would call it a B minus).

“It wasn’t the cleanest game,” Marotti-Huckins said.

She thinks that team should work on individual skill and composure, or keeping the skills up even when the game is fast.

For Maguire, though, it was a great game. Maguire scored four of the five goals for the Blue Devils, a record number of goals for her in one game.

“I thought I had one of my best games,” Maguire said.