East Meck’s field hockey players wear decade-old jerseys and some get their sticks and protective equipment from donation boxes. Even more, they aren’t a school-sanctioned team, which certainly doesn’t set them up for success. The team’s structure is pretty unconventional: it’s a community team, so any girl in CMS can play on it if her school doesn’t have an official team.
East contributes our athletes out of the 20 on the team, one of them being captain Ella Mills. She began playing field hockey in fifth grade, and “just tried out rec and fell in love with it.” When she found out that she could play in high school, she joined the community team while continuing to play for Charlotte’s main field hockey club, Ambush. Mills began working for the captainship at the start of her senior year, influenced by former players and motivated by the team’s new coach, Lori Telesco.
As a captain, Mills gets to witness girls grow in and outside of the game. But her favorite part is seeing new players succeed. “Any time that someone new to the game scores a goal is the best feeling ever. The way it lights up their face, everybody gets so hyped, it’s the best thing ever,” Mills said.
Madeline Topham, a junior, began playing in middle school. Topham enjoys being part of the team, but she feels their existence, not to mention success, is incredibly overlooked by the East community, especially because they went 12-1 this season.
“It’s kind of sad, because East Meck isn’t good at sports, and since we’re one of the good teams, it feels like more people should know about it,” Topham said. Sophomore Abigail Jones is the team’s goalie this season, and is very proud of the team’s progress.
“Our team is ten times better than it was last year,” Jones said. “I really want us to eventually make it to the tournament and end up winning.” The team plays in an end-of-season JV tournament, which they won for the 2025-2026 season.
Becoming a school-sanctioned team is the main goal for East’s players, but the issues don’t stop there. Because east lacks a turf field-the surface field hockey is played on-they practice at Matthews Sportsplex.
“It takes up a large chunk of my day getting there,” Mills said.
“[If we had a turf field,] it would be amazing– we could split it up between sports.” Topham and Mills said. Additionally, the team doesn’t get a lot of attention from college scouts, available coaches or even players.
“We only have a JV team, and we don’t really have the option to move up to varsity just because of numbers, lack of coaching staff and facilities,” Mills said. JV teams can’t play in any official NCHSAA tournaments, so the team’s reach is limited. Despite this, one player from the team earned a Division II scholarship last season.
Because Ambush manages the community team, it is easy for interested players to try field hockey. Ambush runs a drive that collects old equipment to give to new players who may not be able to afford them. There are no tryouts for the team, and the varying skill levels make it easy to fit in. There are one to three games a week, with practice each night for an hour and half. “I’d say just try it– it’s a super welcoming atmosphere,” Mills said. “We’re an all around fun team,” Jones said. “we do fun stuff whenever we score, we hit the whip and nae nae, we dab, it’s so much fun.”
