Interview with Terri Gill

The primary source in my research was my interview with a Trinity alum that formally played field hockey. Terri Gill was on the intramural team from 1973-1974, but her field hockey career started before that, as she grew up playing the sport in Wisconsin. She explained to me that she was used to a much more serious game that involved higher intensity, proper equipment and skilled players. The Trinity IM program was almost the reverse of that since it was so new it lacked an element of legitimacy.

Describing how the program worked, Gill talked about how they had basic training and tried to explain the rules at the start of the season. However, it just was not very popular on campus and therefore the turn out was not even always large enough to play with the standard eleven girls on the field. Gill commented on playing with plastic sticks and plastic balls (Field Hockey Slides, Archives) as opposed to her preferred wooden sticks and cement balls that are used in regular play. Not many people showed up for games or even always to practice because they just weren’t that interested in the sport. Gill said that they had no coach, only a team captain, and she remembers playing with a few Gammas, who brought home the championship.

Regarding her experience with the IM sport, Gill only played for one or two seasons, as she recalled that she had trouble getting invested in the sport because it was so different than the one she knew in Wisconsin. This sheds more light onto the information that in Texas the sport just did not have the numbers and audience as it did on the East and West coasts (Eisen, 2006). Gill said she thought field hockey at Trinity was rather lame and it was not taken very seriously, which is why she decided to stop playing. She said field hockey was not known on campus because of its lack of popularity, but when asked if it might make a come back, she said maybe. Times are always changing and there could be a turn in the rise of field hockey and Trinity could reconsider its short run with the sport and possibly reoffer it as an IM sport one day.