Tradition inspires Eastern field hockey team

One team, one sound.

That's the message splashed across the Eastern field hockey team's navy T-shirts this season. It's simple yet profound, said Alana Barry, the Vikings' goalkeeper.

"It means the noise we make is as a team, not as individuals," said the junior, who finished last season with 19 shutouts in 28 games thanks in part to a smothering defense.

Last year the Vikings' battle cry was "Never settle," and they didn't. Eastern (26-2) rolled to its 11th consecutive state Group 4 championship, extending a national record set the previous year.

That put Eastern in some lofty South Jersey company. Moorestown's lacrosse teams won 10 consecutive Tournament of Champions titles from 2000 to 2009, and Paulsboro's wrestlers won 25 straight state Group 1 titles from 1983 to 2007.

Eastern lost seven seniors, all of whom signed with Division I schools, which would devastate any other team in the state. But Eastern is extraordinary, bouncing back every year. So even though only five starters return (one rotated in last year), no one at the Voorhees school seems overly concerned.

"This will be the youngest, most inexperienced - from a varsity point of view - lineup I have ever fielded," said Danyle Heilig, Eastern's coach for 11 seasons. "There are lots of serious battles for some positions, and that's great. We have some depth."

"The freshmen are superior," said Washington Township coach Jeannine O'Connor, whose teams have lost in the playoffs to Eastern eight times in the last eight years. "So the credit goes to where they came from."

They come from feeder programs at Voorhees, Berlin, and Gibbsboro Middle Schools, which, along with year-round playing regimens, have created a winning tradition.

Senior defender Brittany Evangelisti said that Ginny Concepcion, the Voorhees coach, made the game fun, and that the players learned to love it.

Then, at Eastern, "Danyle brings determination to win and competitiveness to the sport," Evangelisti said. "She's a more serious person. But it's still fun. Winning is always fun. . . . We don't accept losing."

When Heilig gave Barry, another Voorhees alumna, the goaltending job as a freshman, Barry had three years of junior high experience in the cage plus four years on the Jersey Intensity Field Hockey club. She also joined the USA Field Hockey Futures Program, which offers an Olympic development plan.

"I worked hard, and I knew what I was doing, I guess," Barry said about being named a starter.

Heilig, named national coach of the last decade by the field hockey website Topofthecircle.com, expects all of her players to have a solid foundation in the sport by the time they arrive at Eastern. She honors middle school coaches and players for their achievements and runs clinics and summer camps for players, who are invited to be ball girls at varsity games.

"Our feeder programs are no different from others," Heilig said, "but we tie ourselves to the middle school programs maybe more" than other high schools.

Though the coaching in middle school and high school has helped, Barry said, her inspiration to play well came from her older sister, Nicole, a starting goalie who graduated from Eastern in 2008.

Cori Allen, a senior midfielder-forward, and Evangelisti also have older sisters who won championships at Eastern. The two constantly strive to be as good as if not better than their siblings, which brings up the subject of tradition.

"Many people don't want to give up the tradition we set," said Allen, whose sister, Jessica, a 2007 graduate, was a forward on four state-championship teams. (Hope Allen, their mother, played for Eastern in 1983 and coached at Gibbsboro.)

Evangelisti's sister, Valerie, a 2004 graduate, played defense.

"Sisters play a big role" in Eastern's tradition, Evangelisti said. "I looked up to [Valerie] growing up, and she wanted me to play Eastern varsity."

Barry put it best when she said: "Not only does the team not want to break a winning tradition, they want to continue it."

One team, one sound.