Field hockey star hits the links after surgery

It has been a busy year for Sydney Kirby, who kicked off her fall semester by helping the U.S. Under-21 National Field Hockey Team lock up a bronze medal and Junior World Cup qualification at the Junior Pan American Games in Mexico. She returned to Princeton in time for the majority of the Tigers’ near-perfect NCAA championship season, where she earned second-team all-Ivy honors as the team’s third-leading goal scorer — despite her five-game absence.

On Nov. 3, the sophomore earned an Ivy League title when her team completed its conference season undefeated, and two weeks later she was hoisting a national championship trophy in Virginia after Princeton’s 3-2 upset of then-No. 1 North Carolina. In December she underwent hip surgery, and in March she began the latest chapter in her Princeton athletic career: varsity golf.

When Kirby’s doctors told her that December’s surgery would sideline her from the spring field hockey season, she saw the news as an opportunity to return to organized golf.

“I figured I might as well make the best of the situation,” she said. “I grew up playing competitive golf, so playing on the golf team is something I’d wanted to do for a long time. I talked to my field hockey coach [Kristen Holmes-Winn], then the golf coach [Nicki Cutler], and they were willing to give me a shot.”

Kirby, who captured a state championship and all-state honors during her high school golf days in Ohio, dusted off her old clubs and brought them to Princeton for the spring semester. She began practicing with the team in Dillon Gymnasium before impressing Coach Cutler with an individual round at Springdale Golf Club to secure her official roster spot.

Kirby’s plans strayed from their original course when her hip completed a full recovery faster than her doctors had anticipated. She returned to the active field hockey lineup while retaining her place on the golf team, making for a relatively hectic spring calendar. She manages to squeeze in a few classes between her morning field hockey workouts and her afternoon practices on the links.

“With issues like weather and daylight, golf can’t really have a fixed practice time,” she explained. “And since you don’t need 25 people to practice together at once, a lot of golf practices are worked around each player’s schedules; it’s different every day.”

Kirby has gotten to know her new teammates primarily through their weekend practice rounds, noting that the chemistry on the seven-woman golf roster feels a little different from the 24-deep field hockey squad.

“The two teams are incredibly different but function very effectively in their own ways,” she said. “Even though we [golfers] are a team, it’s such an individual sport. There’s very little someone can do to help lift up another teammate if they’re struggling. On the other hand, field hockey is the definition of a team sport.”

In addition to juggling the rigorous new time commitment and adapting to the more individualistic nature of the sport, Kirby has had to take on a different kind of team role than she is used to playing. A starter on the field hockey team, she is often left behind when the golf team travels. In contrast to her intense and vocal leadership style on the hockey field, the rookie tries to bring a sense of calm to her more experienced teammates when she golfs.

“Since I’m so new to golf, I’d probably say my attitude contributes more to the team than my skill,” she said. “I generally go about that by having a more relaxed demeanor and having a good time. My philosophy is that if you play with a level head and you’re enjoying the game, then you’ll shoot lower scores.”

While her accelerated recovery has ironically brought Kirby a greater workload than she was initially seeking, she says the positives of competing on two teams at once outweigh the negatives.