A field hockey journey from elementary school to Division I

Teresa Carotenuto is a freshman forward on Lehigh’s field hockey team. (Courtesy Lehigh Athletics)

Teresa Carotenuto’s field hockey career began in third grade. She tried out the sport because her mother played field hockey in high school, but Carotenuto didn’t share the same passion. When she gave it another chance a year later, though, she liked it much better than she initially thought.

Today, Carotenuto is a freshman on a Division I sports team: Lehigh field hockey. She is a leading scorer for the team with a total of nine goals this season.

Field hockey was a well recognized sport at Emmaus High School, where Carotenuto was a student. She played field hockey for her high school team and on a club team with the hopes of being recruited to play in college.

During her sophomore year of high school, Carotenuto was faced with the challenge of ACL reconstruction surgery, which kept her from playing field hockey for nine months during a crucial time for college recruitment.

“In those nine months, I think I really had to dig deep and grow and see how I could get better as a person,” she said.

Despite her injury, Lehigh’s coaches did not give up on Carotenuto. She said they were persistent and believed she could make a comeback.

“It was a lot of adversity, but I was able to overcome it,” she said.

After a visit to Lehigh, Carotenuto fell in love with the campus and the team’s encouraging atmosphere. Coming into the team, she even had the advantage of already knowing four women from her high school.

“Having them here was great because they were already mentors for me,” Carotenuto said.

Since joining the team, Carotenuto has formed close bonds with the upperclassmen and views them as role models who lead by example. The upperclassmen on the team think just as highly of Carotenuto, seeing her as an essential component to Lehigh’s field hockey program.

“I think we all have a really close relationship to her because she’s so outgoing and always so bubbly,” junior forward/midfielder Marissa Glatt said. “Her positive attitude always helps her on the field since she doesn’t get discouraged and always works hard.”

Carotenuto has had a stellar season so far and is hoping to reach at least 10 goals by the season’s end. While Carotenuto already has nine goals, no other player on the team has more than three. Nine goals is also more than any player had in the entire 2014 season.

“She is very dangerous around the goal and that is something we needed on our team,” coach Stacey Eversley wrote in an email.

Carotenuto attributes much of her success to her focused mindset in each game. Before each game, she envisions how she wants to play while the national anthem is being performed to help her set goals for each game

After the games, Carotenuto always reflects upon what she could have done better in order to learn from her mistakes.

“Her positive energy and work ethic to be better every day is amazing,” Eversley wrote.

Additionally, much of Carotenuto’s success stems from the people she surrounds herself with, including her family, teammates and coaches. She said she is constantly striving to make her parents and her sister proud through her work on the team.

Carotenuto’s club coaches in high school also helped her see much improvement when colleges started looking to recruit.

“My club coaches were phenomenal,” Carotenuto said. “They always pushed you to see what you could do better.”

Although the team’s record is currently 3-11, most of its games have been close. Both Carotenuto and her teammates hope for a vibrant future with Lehigh’s field hockey program.

“She has done so well freshman year, so if she keeps going, it will be great to see what she does over the next four years,” Glatt said.

Setting goals ahead of time, Carotenuto said that by her senior year, she’d love to make the Patriot League tournament, win it and then move on to the NCAA tournament.