Hurricane Ida may have delayed the home opener for Bronxville’s field hockey team, but when the Broncos finally set foot onto Chambers Field on Monday afternoon, it looked like they hadn’t missed a beat. In their first game at the high school since last spring’s Fall II championship win, Bronxville handily defeated a tough Rye Neck squad, downing the Panthers 6-0 in an impressive showing.
Senior co-captains Carmen Phillips and Olivia Gunther led the way in the Sept. 13 win, as Phillips set the pace with three goals and Gunther added two scores and an assist on the day. Bronxville was able to muster 20 shots on goal—with Rye Neck goalie Klara Finkenberg making 14 stops—as the defense allowed just one Panther shot which was stopped by Sofia Costanzo.
With the Broncos at 2-0 on the young season, Phillips and Gunther admitted that every new season comes with a lot of pressure for the perennial powerhouse Broncos. But so far—they say—the early returns have been encouraging.
“Our passing this year has been incredible, even compared to last year,” said Gunther. “We’ve been getting all the passes off to the right players and I think we’ve been working really well together.”
That level of sharpness might be something of a surprise considering the disruptions the Broncos have had to deal with thus far. Flooding from Hurricane Ida on Sept. 1 left Bronxville’s high school fields unplayable until this weekend, leaving the school’s Athletic Department scrambling to reschedule home games and locate new practice spaces.
But Phillips said the team’s focus never wavered.
“Honestly, the team is super-flexible; we went to Haindl Field, the Underdome [in Mount Vernon],” she said. “We showed up, we played to win and we’re ready for anything.”
That focus might be borne from the team’s overwhelming success in recent years. After winning a state title in 2019, the Broncos missed their chance to defend the crown last year after the coronavirus pandemic pushed their season to the spring and eliminated sectional and state tournaments. But after winning the Lower Westchester Regional Crown last year, the Broncos are hoping to make another deep postseason run as high school sports return to normal this fall.
“We trust these girls, we know how they work and we’ve been playing with them for the past two years,” said Phillips. “Coming from last year, where we were regional champs, to the year before when we were state champs, we came into this year wanting to go all the way.”
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