The Paly field hockey continued their trend of strong performances in their 2021 season, placing second overall in SCVAL and boasting a 60% win rate. The team went into this season uncertain as many of the founding members of the team had graduated, but considering the performance shown this year, that did not slow the team down in the slightest.

Paly field hockey saw many outstanding performances this season from players such as junior Kellyn Scheel, senior Eva Salvatierra, senior Vienna Liu, and senior Natalie Hmelar.

In the first six games of the season, Paly accumulated 3 wins and 3 loses, winning against Westmont, Salinas, and Valley Christian. While these games were non-league games, meaning they did not contribute to the team’s final standing at the end of the season, the victories against private schools with long standing and decorated field hockey teams such as Valley Christian boosted team confidence for their later games in the season.

The next two games Paly played in were against Saint Francis and Archbishop Mitty, two schools with decorated field hockey teams, similar to Valley Christian. Against Saint Francis, Paly fought hard but were defeated without scoring any goals and Saint Francis scoring 3. The matchup between Paly and Archbishop Mitty was incredibly close and by the end of the fourth quarter, both teams were still tied zero to zero. In overtime, Archbishop Mitty managed to score a goal over Paly ending the game 1-0.

In their first league game against Monta Vista, Paly saw the reappearance of a trend seen in previous seasons, that being games where they had flawless victories. However, in their next league game, Paly was not as fortunate and lost to Homestead 2-1.

After their defeat to Homestead, Paly went on a lossless streak, winning and tieing their next 5 games against Saratoga, Cupertino, Monta Vista, Wilcox, and Homestead again. After losing to Saratoga 4-0, Paly came back in their final game of the season against Cupertino, winning the game 3-0.

Paly ended their season with 4 league wins, 2 league losses, and 2 tied league games and a total of 8 wins, 5 losses, and two ties. Paly scored a total of 22 goals throughout the season and had 14 goals scored against them.