Windham Resident Pioneers Youth Field Hockey Program

It's funny sometimes where you can trace back the timeline of your professional career to.

Windham resident Chelsey Feole traveled constantly during her decorated tenure as a student-athlete on the Boston College field hockey team.

But it was a fall 2009 encounter in a North Carolina airport following her senior all-star game that helped her to land her first post-graduation gig – as an assistant coach in the sport she loves.

"The UMass Lowell coach was sitting right next to me," said Feole. "Her and I ended up talking for like two hours in the airport."

That coach was Shannon Hlebichuk, who graduated from UMass Lowell in 1998 and has served as head coach there for a decade. The chance conversation with Hlebichuk ended with a proposition that if Feole was ever interested in a coaching position, to not hesitate in sending an email.

The next spring, Feole did just that, and a day later she was interviewing for a job. Suddenly the 2010 graduate was developing a career out of field hockey, but she wasn't going to settle for just her assistant coach role. Feole wanted to create, and create she did.

In fact, at 23 years old, the former three-time All-ACC Academic Team honoree is putting her education toward an entrepreneurial pursuit: the formation of a youth field hockey program in the region called Northeast Elite.

It's a club program that Feole explains is unlike any other in the area, because it really approaches field hockey as only half the battle.

"We want to really establish this culture where it's the whole person," said Feole.

The program was born in December 2010, and already has 115 participants spanned across 12 teams, grabbing kids mostly from Windham, Chelmsford, Andover and North Andover.

They grind it out in Sunday practices, head to every tournament possible, host spring clinics and summer camps. Feole worked the entire summer of 2010 getting it organized, and even spent time during the fall of her first year coaching at UMass Lowell to invigorate a buzz with some of the high school coaches she spoke to.

"I think I was lucky enough to have some pretty good credentials backing me up from my playing experience at BC so I think people really fed into that," said Feole.

Of course, it helps to market your entrepreneurial effort when you have coached on a 24-0 national championship squad, which is exactly what happened during Feole's first season at UMass Lowell, when the River Hawks took the D-II title.

"It was just one of those seasons," Feole said about the championship. "I just think everyone was on the same page and everyone wanted the same things for each other."

That's the exact framework that drives the Northeast Elite program. As director, Feole strives to be a good role model and leader to the young women she educates. She and her coaching staff, many of whom also played at BC, even hold open forums, hashing out concerns with high school players and their parents about what it's like to be a student-athlete.

Feole adds that she knows what they are doing with Northeast Elite is a good thing, because she always says "god I wish I could've played in this program when I was a kid."

For Feole, the big rock in her life outside of her very supportive parents and two older brothers is Hlebichuk, that woman who two and a half years ago was practically a stranger in a North Carolina airport.

"She is incredible – truly, truly the best role model I've had in my life outside of family," said Feole.

While she knows that field hockey can't be 100 percent of her life forever, and that she will one day have to pass down the torch, she knows that it will always be part of her daily routine in some way.

"I might pursue another job and still be a high school coach, and hopefully if I get to raise my own family, be my daughter's coach or something like that," said Feole.

Right now the biggest commitment though is growing and fostering Northeast Elite.

"It's my baby," Feole said. "To think where we've come in just a year is insane. We're growing by the minute. More importantly than growing with numbers is I think people are starting to buy into it. That's what takes a little bit of time."

Click here for more information on Northeast Elite Field Hockey.