The Parkland High School field hockey team came into the 2022 regular season as an inexperienced team with players not having as much varsity experience as in year’s past. But the Trojans stepped up and played at the high level that the program is used to as the team qualified for both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and District 11 playoffs.

Parkland fell to Emmaus 3-0 in the season finale Tuesday night, but won three of its last five games to finish 12-4 overall and 10-3 in the conference.

Knowing the team lacked varsity experience heading into the season, Trojan head coach Julie Sikorski was pleasantly surprised with how her team performed this year. However, deep down she knew her players were capable of everything they accomplished this season.

“I feel that the regular season went well,” said Sikorski. “The team rose to the occasion against difficult teams and found the cage more often than we did last year. I have been proud of them and their ability to prove the ‘you’re a young team’ label wrong. I had players learn new positions and refuse to give up until they were able to excel.”

From the start of the month, Parkland has had a busy schedule, including six games in a span of nine days. A couple of nonconference games and difficult EPC contests will give the Trojans some experience heading into playoffs.

“As a coach I just wanted the girls to come out of any win or loss feeling as though they played well,” Sikorski said. “We had to overcome practice cancellations and game rescheduling due to illness on our team, however, I feel we still did well and competed against these talented teams. We were able to come out of these games with some wins and also learned where we need to improve to make our postseason as successful as possible.”

The EPC Tournament begins on Saturday. Parkland is the four seed and is set to take on the fifth seed Pocono Mountain East in the quarterfinal round.

“For my players, I look forward to competing against some of the teams we lost to the first time around,” said Sikorski. “I know we are capable of beating any of our opponents if the girls play with the confidence I have in them and to the peak of their skill set. Their goal is to make conference and district championships and I believe it is a goal easily within reach.”