The Temple Owls field hockey team honored their alumni at halftime of their 4-0 win over the Appalachian State Mountaineers.
The alumni at hand participated in Alumni day where they were able to meet with the team at midfield to take a photo and receive a round of applause from the hundreds in attendance.
Taryn Nichols, a forward on the team from 2007-2010, was one of the alumni in attendance who was happy to be honored at the game today. But she also has a special relationships with some girls currently on the team.
“It is really great. It helps out my relationship with the girls a lot. These seniors were my freshman. So it is really nice to see them play,” Nichols said. “It’s really funny to see how timid they were as freshman…it’s really special to see the girls who have stuck through the tough four years and are excelling now as seniors.
Nichols was glad that she had such a great relationship with former players that she could share this memorable day with them.
“My field hockey experience was awesome,” Nichols said. “We all lived together, we all lived on the same street. It just kind of made us close as a team and as friends that we can still come back at Alumni day’s like this.”
Nichols is also very excited about the team’s future.
“I think it’s really exciting that Temple is now the field hockey school to go to in Pennsylvania,” Nichols said. “So it is pretty awesome to see how A.J.’s Coach Amanda Janney] brought up the program.”
Cherifa Howarth, a former first-team All-American right wing on the team from 1993 to 1997, either watches the game online or watches it from Geasey field.
“I love it,” Howarth said. “This is my house. And I tell them all the time that those girls are my family. So it’s really special every time I come back here.”
Howarth, who donated the scoreboard at Geasey Field, compared the field hockey team to raising children.
“I’m always willing to help the girls out because I know how hard it is to be a collegiate athlete,” Howarth said. “I wanted to give back to them and make sure that they were able to have better things than I had.”
When Temple played then No. 6 Penn State, Howarth said she saw something special with this year’s team
“They are doing amazing,” Howarth said. “Proud of ‘em. Their will, their effort, their conditioning is like none and that proved it when they beat Penn State 3-0 on four shots.”
Howarth has so much passion for the game that she continue to be involved with the sport to this day. She coaches at Germantown Academy, which is a private school in Fort Washington, Philadelphia.
“I’m actually a little crazy about it,” Howarth said. “I have issue about field hockey cause I am so passionate and love these girls so much and I get excited. So they all hear me screaming…I love these guys.”
“It is really hard when you think about it, to go recruit a kid to come to North Philly and you have to be a special type of person to first of all get recruited here, second of all live here and third of all succeed here,” she added.
Michael Guise can be reached at Michael.guise@temple.edu or on Twitter @MikeG2511
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