High school North defeated South, 3-0, on South’s home field September 23, improving to 6-2-1 on the season while South remains winless at 0-8.
All three goals by North were scored before the half by seniors Catherine Mak, Kylie Mulhall, and Miranda Zhou.
Mulhall is one of the 12 seniors on North’s squad, and though she scored against South her regular role is as center back, the team’s last line of defense.
Kylie and her family live in Princeton Junction. Her father works at KPMG and her mother teaches at Maurice Hawk Elementary School. She plays lacrosse in the spring, and her favorite academic areas are math and writing, though her choice of colleges is currently undecided.
“I love this feeling of winning with friends,” Mulhall said after the game.
Teammate and fellow senior Leah Yourstone plays inner offense and she also loves the camaraderie. She thinks North’s team strength is its chemistry, and after the game she pointed out that most of the senior laden team’s players have played together since the seventh grade.
Yourstone, who also plays first base in softball, lives in Princeton Junction with her mother, who works in advertising. University of Miami is her top college choice, as she is attracted by the strong academics, the presence of family in the area, and, of course, the location. As for what area of study she is interested in, Yourstone is conflicted between health sciences and business.
“The younger girls have caught on quickly,” Yourstone said. “We hope to make states and to focus on our goals.”
The team has successfully experimented with a new method of tracking individual and team goals over shorter periods of time. Yourstone’s mid-year goals are to improve communication, keep stress down, and hustle to the ball while also efficiently switching the field.
North head coach Paula Tessein has noticed that the small goals have helped the team. “They are just so passionate, working hard every day,” Tessein said. “They communicate on and off the field. They reflect, which is key.”
The team needs to work on consistency and managing nerves, Tessein says, as it plays out the four remaining weeks of the regular season with an eye on the Mercer County Tournament on October 18 and the state tournament after that.
For South head coach Christine Cabarle, the loss to North puts the team at 0-8 in a rebuilding season.
“I’m very proud that the girls didn’t give up and played their hearts out. The North-South game is always an emotional and intense game. My girls kept their heads and didn’t allow any goals in the second half,” Cabarle wrote in an E-mail. “Our goals moving forward is to generate more offense and to continue playing aggressively.”
Junior midfielders Marisa Loury and Erin Sheets, alongside sophomore midfielder Vashvi Shah, patrolled the length of the field the entire game.
Senior left back Carolyn Lapettito and senior back Taylor Cohen have been the team’s defensive stalwarts, and Cohen halted multiple breakaways against North.
Cohen has played varsity since her sophomore year, when South’s team featured multiple players headed for Division I field hockey.
“Two years ago was the best season I’ve been involved in. We had an amazing team, seniors who were good captains,” Cohen said. “As a sophomore playing with a great team, I couldn’t have been luckier. I had so many girls teach me skills that I use today.”
Cohen has a passion for language arts classes. An elective class called “Rebellion and Conformity,” taught by Michael Novak, has been particularly compelling for her. She is interested in pursuing an education major in college, and she likes Penn State. Her parents, Wayne, an architect who works in New York, and Debbie, who works locally, live in West Windsor.
This season Cohen has been tasked with defense, after previously featuring on offense. She hasn’t found the adjustment to be particularly hard. The pressure to score goals has been replaced with a pressure to stop goals and stop incoming attackers.
Senior forward Sarah Moxham was also a member of the varsity team two years ago that made a deep playoff runs in both the county and state tournaments.
Moxham’s father, Christopher, is the vice-president of oncology research at Eli Lilly, and mother, Laura, is a homemaker. Sarah enjoys biology and she is attracted by the science programs at Brandeis, Northeastern, and Villanova. She is exploring running for Brandeis’ track and field team, which is her main sport. Moxham specializes in the 400 and 800 meter races. As a sophomore she was a member of South’s 4 x 800 meter relay team that broke the school record.
Transitioning to a leadership role on this year’s team was disorienting at first, she said, though her experiences as a student council representative and as a peer leader guiding freshmen have helped.
“You are more visible; people look to you to guide them,” Moxham said. “It’s realizing ‘wow I’m the senior now and I have to tell people what to do.’ In previous years you had players who lived and breathed field hockey. This year we don’t have one player who handles everything themselves.”
Alongside fellow senior Cohen, Moxham is proud of the team’s progress this season.
“Even though our record does not show it, our team has made massive improvement,” Moxham said. “In terms of the aggressiveness and intensity with which we play, at the beginning of the season we were afraid of the ball a bit. We’ve realized we can handle the ball, we can drive it up the field, and we can score.”
