The Wayland girls’ field hockey team had the best season in Wayland history this year. For the first time in years, the team won the division and were named DCL champions.

Captain Emily Barnard explains the team strived for excellence throughout the season, and their hard work paid off in the end.

“We had a very new team this year and not a lot of experience, so we started early in the summer. We did captain practice and focused a lot on core skills,” Barnard said. “The field hockey team is notoriously a tight-knit team, and we tried to keep up that pattern.”

The team’s success led them to become DCL champions, and they moved on to the tournament.

Junior Emily Wang enjoyed the season as a whole; however, like most athletes, she wishes she could have improved one part of her game.

“If I could go back in time, I would have taken more risks in games,” Wang said. “I would have taken those few extra seconds to dribble and find a better pass or have tried doing some other types of hits during games that we’d done during practice.”

While they were DCL champions, the team lost the playoff game in the tournament.

“I think overall we had a really successful season,” Barnard said. “I was really proud of how we progressed from the beginning to the end of the season, and we achieved things that no other Wayland team has ever achieved before, so I’m really proud of how our season went this year.”

Barnard’s most memorable moment from the season is beating Weston for the first time in 14 years. According to the players, this was a huge accomplishment, considering Weston is Wayland’s main rival, and they could never manage to beat Weston in the past.

“Our field hockey team hasn’t beaten Weston in 14 years, so that was definitely my favorite Wayland High School athletic memory I’ve ever had,” Barnard said.

Junior Jessica Flagg says her favorite memory was the game against Concord-Carlisle.

“The game against CC was a really hard and intense game, but we came out on top, and it was one game we really needed to win if we wanted to win the DCL,” Flagg said.

Because of this past triumphant season, Wang is hopeful the 2016 season will be just as successful.

“I’m excited for next year because there will be five of us seniors, and a majority of the JV team will be moving up,” Wang said. “We’ll have lost a lot of our really good players, but hopefully our new team can bond and have a successful season once again.”