When Jayne Giles joined the new Belfast high school field hockey team in 1973, she and her teammates didn’t have time to worry about competition or getting the uniforms right.
They just focused on learning how to play this sport.
Like most of the other girls who joined the team, Giles, who was in high school, had never watched field hockey before signing up. The high school did not offer fall athletics for girls and added it because of Title IX, the federal law that ensured equal opportunities for male and female athletes. An alumni game will be held on Thursday to mark the team’s 50th anniversary.
The learning curve was tough, Giles said. After just a few weeks of sprint practice, figuring out which side of the racquet to hit the ball with and how high to hold the racquet, the team was well into pre-season.
A yearbook photo of coach Allen Holmes who coached the Belfast field hockey team from 1973 to 2012.
“We looked like a bunch of lemmings, I think,” Giles said, recalling an early skirmish in Pittsfield. “If the ball went right we went right, if the ball went left the whole team went left, all chasing the same ball.”
The referee at the time finally stopped play and pulled the Belfast side aside to remind them to stay in their positions and play on the lanes, Giles said.
The team’s first games were challenging. It didn’t help that they were essentially wearing basketball uniforms earlier in the year. Despite a tough battle against a number of already established field hockey teams in the area, the team has continued to improve, said Karen Taylor, who also played on the team as a senior that year.
Taylor recalls the “thrills” of playing under the lights on the Belfast Area High School football field and the excitement of getting better and growing as a team.
“We became a very tight-knit team because we tried to help each other. We really tried to make the effort to learn the rules and the game,” Taylor said.
Despite not being able to claim a win in that first season, the last game of the year ended in a draw, leaving the first-team record at 0-8-1.
“You’d think we’d won the game, we were so excited,” Giles said.
From those early days, Belfast’s field hockey has built a strong heritage with over 600 victories and multiple regional and state championships. Taylor and Giles attribute much of the team’s success to coach Allen Holmes, who was with the team for 40 years from its inception until his retirement in 2012.
A community has formed around the sport, with parents and locals paying more attention and more and more girls wanting to join the team, Taylor said. Years later, both she and Giles brought several family members to play field hockey for high school, and generations of players have stayed in touch.
Holmes’ daughter, Jan Holmes-Jackson, played for the state championship team in 1989 and has coached the team since her father’s retirement. She even had the opportunity to coach her daughter while she was playing for high school.
“We have a long history in field hockey in our family,” said Holmes-Jackson. “Belfast field hockey is in my blood.”
The team is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the high school’s alumni game, which begins Thursday at 6 p.m. Before the game there will be a presentation on the history of the Belfast field hockey team.
At least 16 of the 23 high school first-team players are expected to play. Giles and Taylor have agreed that at least one of them must score a goal during the game. It’s Giles’ first time playing field hockey since college, she said, and she’s looking forward to playing again with the people who paved the way for the sport’s long history in Belfast.
“We had to start somewhere and we weren’t afraid to go there and do it,” Giles said.
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