Early in the season, St. Timothy's field hockey coach Janet Powers could not have guessed that her squad would win the Association of Independent Schools B Division championship.
In her seventh season at the boarding school in the Stevenson area of Baltimore County, Powers returned few starters. Then, goalie Michelle Garcia was sick and couldn't play for almost three weeks.
Add to those problems, the perennial difficulties of a boarding school team -- a small roster and a late start to the season, and a championship hardly seemed possible.
But Powers, The Baltimore Sun Coach of the Year in Baltimore County/City field hockey, brought her team around quickly.
Often playing three games a week to make up for its late start, St. Timothy's did not lose a game against B Division opponents and finished with a 7-4-3 record.
Saturday, St. Timothy's upset two-time defending champ Park, 1-0, in double overtime to take the B Division title.
"I had a clue after our first couple of games that we had a chance of doing well in terms of seed, but we've never been able to progress beyond the second round," said Powers, a Goucher College graduate and a former nationally competitive hockey player.
Three years ago, Powers was instrumental in realigning the AIS to give teams like hers a chance to be competitive.
"We were having to play opponents that were much stronger and it was just demoralizing to our girls," said Powers. "Since the AIS was already divided into East-West, why not go to A-B with consideration to feeder programs and numbers of enrollment?"
St. Timothy's has no feeder program and one of the smallest enrollments in the AIS. With only 73 girls in the entire school, Powers loses a lot of athletes to three other fall sports -- cross country, tennis and horseback riding.
This fall, 27 girls came out for the hockey team that didn't start practice until Sept. 14, two to three weeks after most teams.
Powers kept 13 players on the varsity -- seven of them never had played hockey before their freshman season at St. Timothy's. Only one, midfielder Carrie Silliman, who was involved in the United States Field Hockey Association's Futures Program, ever had played outside of school.