Nathalie Paquette '18 Recruiting Profile

Nathalie Paquette has played lacrosse and field hockey for me for two years, and she has been a standout athlete each of those seasons, in both sports. Nathalie is a more natural and comfortable field hockey player. It might be that she had better coaching in that sport, or it might be that her confidence has allowed her to grow more as a player, but I think she would agree that field hockey is her stronger sport. I took Nathalie on the lacrosse team because of her natural athletic abilities, her willingness to improve, and her positive attitude, even if her stick skills and tactical knowledge were not as high-level as others’.

Nathalie is a fast runner- both quick in short sprints and fast in longer recovery runs down the field. Nathalie is one of very few players who seems like she can run forever. She does not give up, even as she is exhausted. That determination has helped us to hold off defensively and push the ball up offensively. As a midfield player, Nathalie’s endurance is necessary, but her skills to create situations, to set up plays and then to turn around and recover to defend the counter-attack are equally important. She is involved in a lot of the action! She is not the one who comes up with field hockey stats, the goals, but Nathalie is a play maker, and she forces her opponents to work to have to get around her.

Playing defensively as the right midfielder is a challenge because it’s a constant battle of getting your feet around to try force the ball carrier out to the sideline (to your strong side). They want to go in to the center, to the right midfielder’s reverse stick side, and so the right midfielder has to be tenacious and consistent. The right midfielder is a more naturally offensive player, typically, because the right is the offense’s strong side. I think Nathalie is just as comfortable distributing the ball as she is tackling and denying the ball. Nathalie is also a key factor in our defensive corners and provides very necessary backup on our offensive corners.

One challenge that Nathalie faces is her ability to get down on herself when she makes a mistake. She can get frustrated with herself and she does not give up, but she gets flustered and tends to make more mistakes when she lets it continue. Sometimes a quick and simple timeout or substitution works to remind her that she needs to move on, and I have seen Nathalie begin to remind herself of this fact within the game play. This is a huge development in Nathalie’s maturity as a player and as a high school senior: mistakes happen, but moving through them and learning from them is essential.

It is an honor to coach Nathalie in both field hockey and lacrosse. She is respectful, honest, open, and kind to her teammates and to her coaches. She works to get faster, to play harder, and she is constantly supporting her teammates: the younger ones, the ones on the bench, the ones who score and the ones who don’t. She is a true team player and leader.

In Nathalie’s self-nomination for field hockey team captain, she wrote that her “top

three leadership qualities are that I am motivated, patient and I get along with everyone,” citing that she strives to resolve issues with compassion. One of my goals as a coach of high school girls is that they will understand that sports are always about more than winning and losing. Nathalie lives that, as she balances her big, beautiful family, school, work, and sports, and it is her goal to “get to know each other and have fun…because we will only work as a unit of we work together and have chemistry with each other.”

She is generous with her time, as she helped volunteer for a week-long lacrosse camp which was followed by a field hockey camp that she created for young girls. She created the curriculum and coached the sessions, inviting her friends to help coach. It was a successful fundraiser for St. Jude’s Hospital.