The lessons we've learned have prepared us for the game of life-on the field and off the field." "Being able to be on the field, even if it was only for two hours a day, having that escape in playing a game that you love with your best friends, was awesome. "We took pride in that every single day," Miller said.
The ACC was the lone conference to hold field hockey in the fall as the rest of the nation elected to resume the campaign in the early months of 2021.Īfter working tirelessly through a grueling 2020-21 schedule, while navigating daily COVID-19 testing and online classes, the Blue Devils quickly found themselves preparing for another challenging 2021 fall season.ĭespite the hardships that came with playing back-to-back-to-back seasons through the peak of COVID, junior Hannah Miller was grateful for just the opportunity to play, describing the previous seasons as an honor. After countless meetings and hours upon hours of planning on campus and in the ACC, Duke embarked on a season that would start in September and run until late April. Months later with uncertainty swirling about whether Duke and the ACC were going to hold sports in the fall of 2020, the field hockey team returned to campus. Student-athletes headed home and teams had to shift to Zoom for any kind of team functions. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and like with everything else in the world, and the Duke field hockey program stopped and saw its spring 2020 offseason end before it really had a chance to start. The last time Duke field hockey had a truly normal season was in the fall of 2019.