Shippensburg University’s field hockey team is set to begin a 2025 season that will look quite different from any in recent memory. 

Former head coach Tara Zollinger was hired for the same position at the University of Delaware in March after eight seasons at SU, winning three NCAA Division II titles with an overall record of 114-25. Shippensburg hired Rayell Wallace in May to take over the team. She had coached five seasons as the head coach at Slippery Rock University.

For Wallace, the decision to take the SU position was twofold.

“I’m moving close to home, my family is an hour away… so it was a great family decision. There are more resources here. They have built a successful championship program, and the area for recruiting is much more favorable,” said Wallace.

It wasn’t an easy decision for Wallace though. She reflected on her time at Slippery Rock fondly and detailed the difficulty in leaving a program she helped build.

“We were building a program… the team that’s there now would have been all players that were recruited by my staff and I together,” Wallace said. “It’s hard to develop those relationships with those student athletes and then leave them.”

Wallace was a prolific player, a two-time NCAA Division I All-American at the University of Connecticut and played nine games as a defender on the USA National Team after her collegiate career. She took plenty of that experience into her coaching career.

“Whether it’s tactics, technical stuff, strength and conditioning pieces. I would say there’s a lot,” said Wallace

The transition to SU was made a bit easier by Wallace’s relationship with Zollinger, as the two are friends off the field. Zollinger preached the importance to keeping the Amanda Strous Memorial Scholarship, which was awarded to junior Lilly Cantabene this year. Cantabene will wear Strous’ No. 22 for the season.

The Raiders return several key pieces from the 2024 team that won the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) championship and reached the national semifinals with a 19-2 record.

Redshirt Senior Emma Albee enters her third full season as the Raiders’ starting goalkeeper as the 2024 PSAC Defensive Player of the Year. She had nine shutouts and was second in NCAA Division II with just 0.77 goals allowed per game, holding opponents to 16 goals all season.

Senior forward Agus Garibaldi is hoping to cap off a phenomenal career at SU with another great season. She has been named to the PSAC first-team and a first-team All-American in each of her three seasons as a Raider, and she is in the top 10 for career goals and points at Shippensburg. Last season was her best yet, with 19 goals and 48 points, second most of any PSAC player.

Two more All-PSAC selections also return, including senior Savannah Silvestre, who tallied three assists, including one in the NCAA semifinals. Junior Hannah White has earned second-team All-PSAC honors each of the past two seasons, anchoring the team’s defense as part of her midfield play.

Four freshmen will join the team this year, all midfielders and defenders. Madison Fissel and Gracie Hivner are the in-state recruits, while Sierra Crews and Ava Kientzy represent Virginia and Missouri, respectively. Wallace hopes the newcomers “push the intensity and are not afraid to get out of their comfort zone.”

The coaching staff includes assistant coach Katie Lammando, entering her third season at SU. Wallace praised Lammando’s work, saying: “[she] has ideas that she’s bringing to the table, and she knows the team, so they have that trust in her. She did a lot of behind the scenes work behind the transition of everything.”

The team began practice on this past week, and Wallace had a plan in place: “For the first couple of sessions, it’s a little bit of a creating of understanding of language. What I am looking for, what they are looking for. It is an intro, really.”

Shippensburg field hockey’s schedule begins with a game against Belmont Abbey on September 6, which will take place at IUP. Their first home game will be on September 12 at 5:00 p.m. at Robb Sports Complex against Assumption.

The team was picked to finish third out of 10 teams in the preseason PSAC coaches’ poll. The schedule features road conference games against each of the top two teams, including the season finale against Kutztown. Wallace mentioned the simple key to success in those games is this: “Playing Shippensburg field hockey. Honestly.”

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