US women’s field hockey team is embracing an underdog role at the Paris Olympics

COLOMBES, France (AP) — Players sang as they stretched after their final pre-Olympic practice, an upbeat workout that showed off the joy among the U.S. women’s field hockey team to be back on this international stage.

They are happy to be here, even as a long shot to medal after failing to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. It’s the first Summer Games for every player on the young roster, but that inexperience comes with an eagerness to embrace the underdog role in a tournament full of powerhouse opponents.

“Anything can happen in tournament hockey, I think that that excites us,” captain Amanda Golini said Thursday at Yves-du-Manoir Stadium, a venue still in existence from the 1924 Paris Olympics. “But at the same time, we know what we’re capable of and I think we’re hopeful to put out a performance that we can be proud of. And, at the end of the day, the results will be what the results are.”

“Anything can happen in the Olympics” was the phrase teammate Ashley Sessa used last week, stressing the value of players putting themselves in uncomfortable situations and growing from those opportunities. With that in mind, the 20-year-old forward from Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, does not see youth as a drawback and said everyone is concentrating on how to think more about what they have done in the sport versus what they have not done.

“We’re a very mature team,” Sessa said. “A lot of people will say it’s all of our first Olympics and that may play a role, but we really are focused on playing the mental side of it and how we’ve played this game thousands of times and we’ve played for decades.”

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Golini, 29, has the most national team experience with 154 games, and goalkeeper Kelsey Bing is not far down the list at 86. No. 155 for Golini and No. 87 for Bing come when the U.S. opens group play Saturday against Argentina.

“This is everybody’s first experience, so we’re all doing that together and we’re all having an experience together,” Bing said. “I think it helps us stay a lot more present-based.”

The present is important in part because the past is undecorated and the future features an Olympics on home soil. The U.S. has not won an Olympic field hockey medal since the women’s team took home bronze at the last Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984, and it has happened only twice, including the men back in 1932.

The 2028 Olympics taking place in LA makes it a worthwhile goal for the program to build toward seriously contending by then. Sessa said she and several other players also have set a goal of raising the standard of U.S. field hockey and growing the game back home.

That process starts now, and if there’s an internal expectation for what success looks like, no one around the team is sharing.

“Expectations in life, they’re rarely met,” coach David Passmore said. “So, we try not to go there and just look at what’s our process, what do we need to do next — both within the context of the next game and then the next few seconds we play in the game.”

Passmore called Argentina a tough opponent, to which Golini responded that the U.S. has five of them, also facing Spain, Australia, Britain and South Africa over a span of eight days. Each game is another chance for the young Americans to gain valuable seasoning and get accustomed to Olympic competition.

“We’re always trying to learn lessons as we go along,” Bing said. “We’ve obviously not had every result we wanted (go) our way, but I think what we’ve done every game is had growth and I think that’s incredibly important. As long as we’re able to focus on that and take away small learning points from each game, I think that’s what’s going to help set us up for success moving forward.”

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