By LILLIAN GLAROS
Courtesy of USA Field Hockey
Four current and former University of Maryland (UMD) field hockey players will be traveling with one of the team’s assistant coaches to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris this month.
UMD graduates Kelee Lepage, Brooke DeBerdine and Leah Crouse and graduate student Emma DeBerdine have been selected as members of the 2024 U.S. Olympic Women’s Field Hockey Team, which will play its first match on July 27 against Argentina. Assistant coach Jenny Rizzo is a provisional player, which means she will play goalkeeper if needed.
In addition, the U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team will feature a former Terp, Alyssa Thomas, who played basketball for UMD from 2010 to 2014 and remains the team’s all-time leading scorer. Thomas plays in the WNBA for the Connecticut Sun.
“It feels so unreal,” Lepage, a defender who graduated from UMD in 2020 with a marketing degree, told College Park Here & Now. “I feel incredibly grateful to be able to go live out this dream.”
Eleven UMD women’s field hockey alums have gone on to play in the Olympics, according to UMD Athletics.They are Katie Kauffman Beach, Lauren Powley, Dina Rizzo, Sarah Silvetti, Keli Smith-Puzo, Katie O’Donnell Bam, Jill Witmer and the four on this year’s team.
Lepage, who joined the national USA Field Hockey team in 2020, played as a defender for the UMD squad from 2016 to 2020.
She grew up watching the Olympics, Lepage said. Her dream of becoming an Olympian grew in high school, where she was coached by 1984 Olympic bronze medalist Brenda Hoffman.
Long-time UMD women’s field hockey head coach Missy Meharg was one of the coaches who influenced Lepage as she made her journey toward the Olympics.
“Even before when I was getting recruited, she asked if USA Hockey is a dream of mine, and I told her yes, and she said we’re going to make sure you get to that place,” said Lepage, who scored 43 points, including three game-winning goals, during her time with the Terps.
“I think my favorite part is honestly … being a part of a team … pushing each other to our limits and supporting each other, encouraging each other when things get hard,” Lepage said.
Rizzo also said she dreamed of playing at the Olympics, although field hockey wasn’t always the one-time soccer player’s sport of choice. She started playing in fifth grade, and like Lepage, took inspiration from previous athletes on the national women’s field hockey team.
“I want to just support my team as much as possible,” said Rizzo, who played as a goalkeeper for Penn State before taking assistant coaching jobs elsewhere and then coming to UMD. “I want to serve them and be able to just do what I can to play whatever role that might be at this Olympic Games, whether I end up on the field or not.”
Rizzo said she was inspired by goalkeeper Jackie Briggs, who played for the U.S. Olympic team in 2012 and 2016.
“At that point in time, Jackie Briggs was coming up as the USA women’s goalkeeper, and I remember I had her poster on my wall and I was just so inspired by, like, her grit and just her demeanor as a player,” Rizzo said.
Training is heavy as the team prepares, Rizzo said.
“We mainly train in the morning, like, from 8 to 10, and then after that, we’ll have either lift or a meeting, and then some days we’ll have optional technical sessions in the afternoon, where we’ll work on more, like, fine details of set plays,” Rizzo said.
The team is training in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it will also practice against the U.S. Olympic Men’s Field Hockey Team.