The U.S. women\u2019s field hockey team, of which 3 Lancaster County High School grads perform on, is going back to the Olympics in Paris this summer after missing out on the Tokyo Games. It will be their first trip to the Olympics since 2016.<\/p>\n
Penn Manor grads Brooke and Emma DeBerdine, and Manheim Central grad Jillian Wolgemuth are on the team.<\/p>
For Wolgemuth it was her 50th appearance with the USA team. Wolgemuth graduated from Duke in 2020. The Dexedrine sisters graduated from U of Maryland.<\/p>\n
The Americans clinched a spot in the 12-team tournament after beating Japan 2-1 in the semifinals of a last-chance qualifier in India, where the top three nations earn Olympic berths.<\/p>\n
Ashley Hoffman and Abby Tamer scored fourth-quarter goals to overtake the Japanese.<\/p>\n
The U.S., ranked 12th in the world, went 4-0 so far in this week\u2019s tournament, beating three higher-ranked teams \u2014 India (No. 6), New Zealand (11) and Japan (9).<\/p>\n
Had the U.S. lost to Japan, it would have had one last chance to qualify for Paris in a third-place game against India or Germany (ranked fifth in the world).<\/p>\n
The U.S. has won one Olympic medal (bronze in 1984), then placed eighth in the 1988 Seoul Games.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t qualify for an Olympics again until 2008 (aside from getting in automatically as host nation in 1996). The U.S. competed in three consecutive Games from 2008 through 2016 with a best finish of fifth.<\/p>\n
For Tokyo Olympic qualifying, India beat the U.S. 6-5 in a two-leg aggregate in the Americans\u2019 last chance to qualify.<\/p>\n
Nobody from the 18-player roster from this week\u2019s qualifier has Olympic experience. The oldest player is 28-year-old Karlie Kisha.<\/p>\n
The to-be-named Olympic roster will be 16 players, plus up to three alternates.<\/p>\n
Erin Matson, the most famous name currently in U.S. field hockey, did not play for the national team this year. At North Carolina, she won four NCAA Championships and three NCAA Player of the Year awards from 2018-22.<\/p>\n
She was then named head coach in 2023 and in November became one of the youngest head coaches in NCAA history across all sports to win a national title.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe door (to playing for Team USA) is not closed, but it\u2019s not open,\u201d she said in November, according to Olympics.com. \u201cIf the stars align and there\u2019s a possibility, you know, to do it someday and represent my country again then my athletic director, he knows if we can make it work and if it\u2019s the right timing with the right people, with the right resources, you know, then let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. women\u2019s field hockey team, of which 3 Lancaster County High School grads perform on, is going back to the Olympics in Paris this summer after missing out on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-field-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45553"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45559,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45553\/revisions\/45559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/llleaguesportsvideos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}