State championship hockey banquet at Schellville is surreal
The word surreal is misused and overused in the sports arena, as if athletes all suddenly turned into philosophy majors. Simplistically, surreal means dreamlike; a related word, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is wackadoodle.
Cape’s 2023 state championship field hockey banquet held Dec. 4 at Schellville was surreal and wackadoodle, a total Christmas immersion into a storied sports past that seems on the surface unfathomable, if not surreal.
The 2023 state championship marked 10 state titles for coach Kate Windett Austin, beginning in 2012. Coach Windy, as she is known to players, passed 200 wins in the semifinal 6-0 shutout of Milford, but that milestone was kept quiet, not wanting to jinx the team in the finals.
Fellow state championship coaches Carolyn Ivins (1979) and Ruth Skoglund (1995) were in the funhouse to present awards named in their honor. State championship coach Nicole Catanzaro Hughes was not in attendance.
Cape graduates 11 talented seniors and returns just two juniors, Macy Steinwedel and Lina Frederick.
But down low, deeply talented classes of sophomores and freshmen bode well for the future. In the words of Robin Adair, the Cape grad who won 10 state titles as head coach at Tower Hill, “Cape has a deep bench.”
That deep bench has been cranking out 50 years of winning teams, and it would be surreal if that suddenly stopped.
