After a historic season, Oberlin’s field hockey team has been awarded numerous accolades. Head Coach Jess West and Assistant Coach Emily Harris were named the North Coast Athletic Conference’s Coaching Staff of the Year for just the third time in the program’s history. College third-year midfielder Bella Tilford was named NCAC First-Team All-Conference, an honor not achieved by a player in this program since 2016. College fourth-year goalie Janny McCormick and College fourth-year defender Elly Scheer were both named NCAC Second-Team All-Conference.

“It’s a great honor,” Harris said. “I think that it is a result of our players making us look good, and at the end of the day, we’re not the ones going out onto the field, they’re the ones that are executing, and they’re fully deserving of the credit.”  

In Coach Harris’ first year at Oberlin, her offensive expertise helped lead the team to score 40 total points, more than quintupling last year’s seven. In her collegiate career playing for Vermont State, Harris notched NCAA Division III records for season points per game, career points per game, season goals per game, and career goals per game. 

“She’s made a huge difference,” Tilford said of Coach Harris. “She has really pushed our forward line, especially to have a really strong circle presence, and helped us with offensive strategy that we haven’t really had in the past. Our coach [Jess West] is great – she played defense her whole life, and that shows how strong of a defense she built. But having that offensive assistance … [has] really helped us strategically with figuring out how to connect in the circle to actually produce goals.”    

Harris and West developed a strategy where the two would coach separately: Harris on offense and West on defense. During practice, players would either be on attack, driving the ball to the goal, or on defense. Then they would flip so that everyone would have a good sense of both offense and defense. 

“Bringing in an assistant coach who complements my coaching style and fully buys into our program has made a tremendous impact,” Coach West wrote in an email to the Review. “That balance and shared vision allowed us to support our athletes more effectively and helped the team take another big step forward.”

After being named NCAC Second-Team All-Conference in 2024, Tilford leveled up her game, amassing a career high nine points and three assists. Scheer also built on past success; following 2024’s NCAC Third-Team All-Conference award, she finished off her collegiate career with 22 defensive saves. McCormick notched 75 saves this season, bringing her career total to 347 saves, fifth best in Oberlin history. 

The three noted players’ successes contributed to the program’s best season in nearly 15 years.  Their 4–9 record is tied for the best season since 2011, and they put together the best five game start since 2017. Scheer noted that much of the success of this season had to do with their strong beginning. 

“Starting off on that note brought really great energy [and] team camaraderie,” Scheer remarked. “So we were excited to get out on the field. We were excited to see our progress … winning games is not something that we’re necessarily used to. [But after] feeling what it’s like to win, we were just more hungry to continue that.”    

Another thing that contributed to the team’s success this season was a continued emphasis on team culture. 

“Culture building has always been a really, really big staple of the program itself, and it’s something that has always been a priority,” Harris said. “We adopted a ‘one team’ mentality this year, so when things weren’t necessarily going our way, or at the start of the game where we were trying to set our intention. We would say, ‘one team,’ which really meant that everyone was embodying the same goal, and we were playing for the person next to us and our team rather than ourselves.” 

Tilford echoed this idea and added that Coach West in particular contributed to this positive team culture. 

“[Coach West] just has made it clear in everything she does that she always has my best interest in heart [and] in mind,” Tilford said. “I’ve never had a relationship with a coach as close as I do with Coach West, where we just have transparent, open conversations … I can go and talk to her and be open about anything I’m struggling with in the season, and she will take that in almost as her own struggle … It’s made me feel really seen as a player and as a person in this program.”  

Tilford, Scheer, and Harris noted that the accolades awarded to the team this year mean a lot to the individual players. The All-Conference and coaching honors both speak to the success of the program as a whole and bodes well for the future.

“I think it shows that we have players here, and we have a program here that is able to be recognized up there with the top players in our program,” Tilford said. 

She also returned to the idea of “one team” that Harris mentioned as foundational to the program’s culture. 

“On a team level, we really are one and extensions of each other,” Tilford said. “If something good happens to me, it does feel like it’s something good happening to everyone.”  

Harris agreed, adding that the team’s success helps build confidence in the program by showing all the athletes on the team a blueprint for success.  

Looking forward to next season, Harris hopes to continue building on the growth the team saw on the offensive side. The team, she said, needs to work on staying confident in close games and capitalizing on opportunities to score. Tilford echoed this sentiment.

“I really would like to have a winning season,” Tilford said. “I think that that’s totally possible for us, and I think that’s something that a lot of people on our team want. So building off this year, [we need to take] the discipline that we’ve built and [use] it to grow as a program and place ourselves among the top teams in our conference, and really become a team to be reckoned with.”