Dominant Monomoy Field Hockey Program Begins New Year With Conditioning Top Of Mind

HARWICH – At the beginning of a preseason practice last Thursday, players on Monomoy’s field hockey team lined up on one side of the high school’s turf field. Then they ran down and back. More than a dozen times.

As they hustled through summer heat, head coach Kyle Cappallo stood in the center providing the requisite motivation. This is a college-level run test, he said, adding that no one else on the Cape does this before practice. This raises the ceiling and makes it easier in the cooler weather later this season. This is the difference between losing in the first round and making the finals, he said. 

For a program that has made the Division 4 state finals two years in a row and the semifinals four years in a row, conditioning is seen as what may push the team over the top in 2025 as it looks to capture a tournament title — the elusive final piece and what would be the capstone to an already uber dominant run.

“We've just been grinding a little more than we did last year,” freshman Mia Zimmerman said.

The last time Monomoy didn’t stand as one of the final four teams in the tournament was pre-COVID. After an undefeated 2024, the Sharks have lost two regular season games total in the last two years. Whereas most teams may have a couple, maybe a few, club players in the lineup, Capallo’s entire starting 11 plays club. They’ve fallen to Uxbridge, winners of four consecutive state titles, three years in a row in the postseason. 

“We have to win it,” junior Kate Huse said. “Like we're bound to win it this year.”

With four seniors graduating from last season, the roster isn’t expected to miss a beat. The team has a goal-scoring and midfield core that was all underclassmen last year and have all improved this year, Cappallo said. The goalkeeper, Maddy Swett, is a sophomore three-year starter. 

The players, for better or worse, feel the pressure to complete that last step of winning a title. The seniors, like Tessa Grodzicki and Sam Clarke, especially want it. 

“Obviously the expectations increase every year because the team has been to four final fours in a row, two finals in a row, so the desire and the appetite to perform better and the expectations rises,” Cappallo said. “Last year, our expectation was to get to a final. It's the same this year. We want to get to the final, and we think if we do, we've got a very strong chance of winning it.”

Monomoy has a trio of top returning scorers in junior Emery Cappallo, Zimmerman and Clarke. They’re versatile players, and everything they did last year they do better this year, their coach said. He feels confident that the group makes for a potent offense that will create quality scoring opportunities.

Grodzicki and Huse will play in the midfield. Huse is the quarterback on the field while Grodzicki is relentless on defense, Cappallo said.

“That duo helps me create a lot of turnovers, and if we can get the ball to my three forwards, they have a tendency to be able to take care of things,” he said. “Defensively, I think we're a much more athletic backfield than we have been in past years, which is good.”

If Monomoy does make it to the finals for a third straight year, the conditioning will have been a key component, players believe. Fitness was similarly a main focus before last season, too. Their endurance will be there for the long haul, Emery Cappallo said. 

“We're really elevating ourselves compared to last year, which is only going to help us more,” she said.

On the field, the conditioning means that the Sharks can keep all their starters on the field. If they lose the ball, they can run back to get it. 

“We can run around and run through everyone,” Huse said. “No one’s going to get by us if we’re the ones running up the field every two seconds, making it impossible to stop us.”

As the Sharks begin a quest for a state title, one wrinkle at the outset is that Uxbridge, archnemesis of the last three years, has moved out of Division 4 into Division 3 and thus no longer looms as the season extends deep into November. But Monomoy is focusing on themselves. They have a tough, aggressive schedule and will face many schools outside their division. 

“It’s still going to be hard,” Emery Cappallo said. “It’s not going to be a walk in the park for sure. We’ve got to climb our way there, and we’re going to see that over the season.”