‘That team is like my family’: Oxford Brave Field Hockey enters second season as club team

When Kylie Winkler walked onto Miami University’s field hockey field for the first time this August, she didn’t know much about the sport.

“I was really nervous,” she said. “I’m super nervous for the first game, too.”

Kylie is practicing on a university field, but she’s not in college yet. She’s a sophomore at Talawanda High School, and she’s joining the Oxford Brave Field Hockey Team this year after encouragement from her friends.

“It’s really fun,” Kylie said. “At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it because my hand-eye coordination is not very good. I played soccer before for like five years, and I kind of thought this was like soccer, which it is, but not exactly.”

For years, Talawanda had its own official field hockey team for high school girls. After the district failed to pass a levy in 2022, the team got cut as a cost-saving measure, and the community banded together to form the Oxford Brave. The nonprofit organization, which got 501(c)3 status this year after its first full season in 2023, is giving girls an opportunity to take part in the sport despite the cuts.

Maggie Stanger, a senior on the team, has been playing field hockey since her freshman year. When she heard that Talawanda was planning to cut the team after her sophomore season, she said she never doubted that she would still have an opportunity to play her junior year.

“Everybody was for keeping field hockey around even though Talawanda wasn’t supporting us anymore,” Maggie said. “... That team is like my family, and it would be really sad if I wasn’t able to keep playing with them.”

The shift from a school team to a club organization came with a learning curve, especially for the parents fighting to make it happen. Maggie’s mom, Krista Stenger, serves on the team board with Wendy Duvall and two other members. Without the built-in infrastructure as a school team, they had to learn all of the paperwork and logistics while making sure they had enough athletes to field an 11-person team.

“There’s just three of us running things behind the scenes,” Stenger said. “Even just throughout the day, we’re like, ‘Hey, we need to have an announcer, and we need to have somebody working the gates, and we need to do all these things.’”

Now that they’re going into the second season as a club, Duvall said they can focus more on the excitement of having a team. Eight seniors graduated last year, more than half the team, but the girls helped recruit so that they’ll have 12-15 players this fall. At one practice last week, 16 players attended.

The Oxford Brave practice on Miami’s field hockey field Monday through Thursday from 7-8:30 p.m. Joan Carol Oliveras, assistant coach for Miami’s field hockey team, is the head coach for the Oxford Brave this year.

Even when Carol can’t make it to practice, the girls know what to do. At one practice this week, Carol had a conflict in Cincinnati, so the seniors took charge, leading the newest members of the team through drills and explaining the rules of the sport. Carol said he’s been impressed with the girls’ willingness to learn and take charge.

“Of course I want to be there always, when I’m able to,” Carol said. “But it says a lot of how mature the girls are, the fact that they’re able to [run practices] and they even say, ‘No, no, we want to do it.’”

This is Carol’s first time coaching the Oxford Brave, but his experience extends back to his childhood, when he started coaching younger players in Spain at age 16. He also has experience as a video analyst for Spain’s women’s national team. Working with the Brave, he said he’s been excited about the team so far, especially watching the newest members improve in such a short time.

Maddie Coleman, a sophomore going into her second year on the team, said she’s played other sports before, but field hockey is the only one she feels motivated to get better at. The other players on the team have made the experience worth it to her, even though they aren’t associated with Talawanda.

“Everybody worked so well together [last year],” Maddie said. “We didn’t win a single game, but none of that mattered because we all had fun, and nobody took it too personally.”

Now that she isn’t one of the newest members on the team, Maddie said she’s excited to move into the “older sister” role for her teammates trying out field hockey for the first time. This season, she’s hoping to see some personal self-improvement, but it would also be nice to win a game, she said.

Ellery Duvall, a senior, said the newest members of the team have caught on quickly. Being a club team has also come with benefits, she said, like playing on Miami’s field and working more closely with field hockey players from Miami because of the good connections. Last week, the team also welcomed players of all ages for a practice to try out the sport, something the official high school team hadn’t done.

“I’ve been really excited because we’ve been incorporating middle schoolers into the practices,” Ellery said. “We had a little camp that we did with them, and to see the interest of the community grow, I think is really exciting to me to see how this team can grow.”

Wendy Duvall said the team’s ultimate goal is to get back under the umbrella of Talawanda athletics, but for now operating as a club does give them latitude they wouldn’t otherwise have, like in planning a camp for younger players.

“It’s not as much red tape,” Duvall said. “There’s a smaller organization to kind of manage it, but the hard part about being a club is our players, we can’t participate in the state tournament … Our players are not eligible for the All-State team. So there are things that are downsides.”

While the team charges a $300 participation fee, Duvall and Stenger said they don’t turn anyone away and work with parents on equipment costs and other needs. The team is still accepting new players, and its first home game will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 20 against Oakwood.