- Played field hockey since 5th grade
- Favorite subject: Math
- First year playing on the varsity field hockey team
Mercy High School – 15-year-old sophomore Julia Rea from Mercy High School is one of the many winners among her field hockey team to win a Fall Fan Choice Award. More specifically, she won “Favorite Midfielder,” which is a position where a player is one of the multi-tasking runners of the group. Her job is to play both offense and defense.
"My position is a lot of running, but mainly as the center-midfielder, it's about feeding the balls up the field, making passes, trying to do plays, and just everything to work the ball up the field to the goal," says Rea.
Since the 5th grade, Rea has played field hockey and over the years has grown to love the sport and the position that she plays. “I love that it’s such an active sport, and working with my team and building relationships with people, as well as getting activities in, like your daily amount of exercise,” she says.
Rea was very excited to find out her teammates nominated her for the Fall Fan Choice Awards and says her team is like her family. “We’re actually like really close,” she says. “There was a little difficulty last year with our coaches, but this year we’ve got a set coach, set team and were all having a lot of fun.”
In terms of a typical day for the field hockey player, Rea explains that her team’s routine is to do warm-ups on the field and do drills set by their coaches. “It’s all really fun, interactive and stuff, but we do focus to work and improve our skills every day,” she explains.
As aforementioned, Julia is only a sophomore and is a player on the varsity team at Mercy. Apart from her athletic schedule, the athlete is also a part of other extracurricular activities, including pro-life, Youth Mercy Associates and Angel's Place. But out of all of her activities, she says she like the sport and her team more.
"I like the sport and I like my team," she says. Additionally, the Bloomfield, Michigan native shares one final thoughts on having a positive mindset as a field hockey player just before leaving for practice.
"I think the main thing you need to play [field hockey] is a confident attitude because you can have all the skills in the world, but if you don't think you're gonna' do well enough then you're not gonna perform on the field.”
We’d like to thank our 4Frenzy sponsors for their support: DMC Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine, Hungry Howie’s, Meijer, Southeast Michigan Ford Dealers, and Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation