By TIM TAYLORTioga County Sports Report
NEWARK VALLEY — The Newark Valley field hockey team will have more numbers to work with this season, but the Cardinals will still be a youthful group.
“We're really young again,” coach Jessica Doehring said. “We have one senior and two juniors, so the majority of our team is freshmen and sophomores.
“Overall, we've got better numbers than last year, so that's nice,” Doehring said. “We'll have some subs and stuff. We’ve got a lot of new kids coming in. We have a big freshman class again, and then we had a couple new players join up too. We'll be young, but overall I think it's looking promising, hopefully.”
Section IV returned to three divisions after a season with two and NV will move to Division 3. The section’s 15 teams will play each other at least once (NV plays Spencer-Van Etten/Candor twice).
“That'll be interesting to see how it goes,” Doehring said.
Several Cardinals put in off-season work also.
“We participate in the winter league over in Binghamton, and we do summer league and stuff,” the coach said. “Over the summer, we do some workouts here once a week, so I would say probably at least half of everyone that's been here did a little bit of something.”
Doehring’s biggest focus leading up to the season opener will be getting “everyone's fitness in mind so that we're ready to go.”
NV will scrimmage at Owego next Tuesday, then open Thursday at home against two-time defending Class B state champion Vestal.
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PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.
