As a young first grader, Hannah Prince would get up on Saturday mornings and go out onto the wet, grassy high school fields in her hometown of Gorham, Maine to take part in field hockey clinics taught by local high school players.

“When I first started, it was more of like, ‘duck, duck, goose,’ and how to hold the stick and an occasional dribble,” Prince said. “That was pretty much the extent of us actually playing, but every year it progressed more.”

Fifteen years later, Prince is a senior co-captain on the nationally-ranked Massachusetts field hockey team.

An ‘almost immediate’ love

Greg Prince, Hannah’s father, said that his daughter’s love for field hockey was “almost immediate.”

“At the end of our driveway there’s a little bit of a wall, and she would go out there for hours, just slapping the ball against the wall, and ask me to turn the light on when it got dark,” he said.

Prince was introduced to the game by her older sister, Jordan, but the high school students who taught her were her true inspiration.

“They were so much older, and they were very athletic and they set a good example for my class,” Prince said. “They made a big impact on us.”

Prince had come to idolize one high schooler in particular, Jennifer Durgin. Durgin’s older sister, Alicia Durgin, coached Prince in middle school, and took her to some of Jennifer’s games at Springfield College. Seeing Jennifer play at the collegiate level was an important moment for Prince.

“That’s when I kind of decided that college field hockey was my next goal after high school,” Prince said.

Coming to UMass

After playing four years at Gorham High School, where she played all-state three years in a row (2007-09) and won other honors such as Western Maine Player of the Year and Miss Maine Field Hockey (both in 2009), Prince looked to the collegiate scene and ultimately decided on UMass.

“I wanted a small town setting, and the UMass program has a great history and I loved the coaches,” she said.

Prince was recruited by former coach Justine Sowry. Donning Jennifer Durgin’s jersey No. 11, Prince started in all 21 games in her first year with the Minutewomen. When it was over, all she wanted to do was play more field hockey.

“As soon as (the last game) was over, her and I were talking,” Greg Prince said. “And she goes, ‘I can’t wait to play again.’ And I believe when she got back to UMass, she went out on the field the next day and hit the ball around.”

After that season, Sowry was hired to coach at Louisville, and current Minutewomen coach Carla Tagliente came to the team in January 2010.

Prince said she was sad to see Sowry go, and it wasn’t easy transitioning to a new coach, but now she’s glad to have Tagliente at the helm.

“The transition was hard for her, for us,” she said. “But once we got to know her and grew trust with her, the team definitely adapted well, and obviously we’ve had a lot of success with her.”

When Tagliente saw Prince in her first season as a coach, she saw a lot of potential in her.

“She was a strong defender in a lot of ways, and a decent distributor out of the back too,” Tagliente said. “We were pretty impressed with what her skill set was, but we knew she could grow in a lot of different areas.”

But over the course of the three seasons she’s coached, Tagliente has also discovered just how much passion Prince has for the game.

“There’s not really a day she takes a day off when she’s on the field,” she said. “You never have to worry about her bringing it to practice, raising the level of practice, being prepared for practice. If anything, you’re pulling her back and trying to get her to take a breath and relax.”

And that passion isn’t just limited to the field of play.

“For her, it could be just some random daily thing, and she does it with the intensity that she steps on the field every day,” Tagliente said.

Prince has come a long way in her time at UMass. After scoring her first offensive points in her junior year with two goals and five assists, Prince achieved career-highs in her final season with eight goals and 12 assists, and led the team in defensive saves with four, tying her career-high.

“This has been her most consistent season in terms of performance,” Tagliente said. “I think in the past, we definitely saw her performance ebbing and flowing and being a little bit of a roller coaster, and hitting a point in the season each of the years where she really hit kind of a stagnant point. She hasn’t hit that this year.”

Leading the team

Prince was named the team’s strength and conditioning captain in the spring of her sophomore year, and took on the role of organizing the team’s warm-up and workout sessions. She would also help organize the team’s preparations for road trips.

“I like things to be on time and organized, so I kind of just took on that,” Prince said.

She also took on small leadership roles on the field, trying to encourage her teammates and give them constructive criticism.

“She leads by example, but she’s a great locker room leader as well,” Tagliente said. “She is vocal and not afraid to communicate and organize and say what’s on her mind.”

So when Prince was named co-captain in her senior year, along with senior midfielder Alexa Sikalis and junior defender Lauren Allymohamed, it was almost a formality.

“I don’t think anything really changed out of the box for her,” Tagliente said. “She just is more of a visible leader now.”

Prince’s collegiate career came to an end when the Minutewomen fell to Duke in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, ending the team’s most successful season since 2000.

“It’s a sad thing for us to be done, and this group will never play as these 23 girls ever again,” Prince said. “But I’m so proud of how far we came in the last three years since Carla’s been here. We’ve grown so much.”

She said the thing she’ll miss the most as she moves on to the next stage in her life will be the game days at Garber Field.

“Putting on the uniform, being in the locker room with the team, getting pumped up, going out on the field,” she said. “Definitely playing at Garber, and just being with my team.”

From player to coach

Graduating from college won’t mean the end of field hockey for Prince. As a public health major with a minor in psychology, Prince wants to become a college field hockey coach. She currently coaches a club team in Greenfield, and teaches some field hockey clinics and gives personal lessons over the summer.

Prince will be working with Tagliente over the spring and getting some mentoring from her. Tagliente said Prince has what it takes to be a great coach.

“You don’t see many players anymore fixating and articulating that that’s what they want to do. Usually, it’s, ‘I will if I don’t find something else,’” Tagliente said. “But she’s really clear in her goals and what she wants to do, and because of her clarity and how focused she is on it, I think she’ll succeed in it.”

Jesse Mayfield-Sheehan can be reached at [email protected] and can be followed on Twitter @jgms88.