Taylor rules field with all the right moves

Chris Yemma

Newport Harbor High field hockey coach Kristy Cross said senior Jenny

Taylor is the best field hockey player she has ever seen, flat out.

With moves that are unparalleled, strategy that is unsurpassed and

speed that is untouchable, Cross said Taylor is ready for college

ball.

And since she used to play field hockey, Cross would know.

Taylor, a senior captain for Newport Harbor, has led the team to

back-to-back Sunset League championships since she has been starting

on varsity, and last season led the Sailors to the Los Angeles Field

Hockey Association Tournament of Champions title -- the Super Bowl of

high school field hockey.

The team has won the Sunset League four out of five seasons and

the tradition at the school runs deep. Taylor added to it the moment

she was brought up to varsity during the middle of her sophomore

season, another league title season, to her final high school game

Thursday at Fountain Valley High -- a 1-0 loss to Harvard-Westlake in

her second TOC title game.

“Being a first-year coach, I didn’t know what goals or

expectations to have for our season,” Cross said. “Until I saw Jenny

on the field. Her moves, her strategy, and her speed -- she blows

right through people -- is unsurpassed.”

Taylor started playing field hockey when she was a freshman. The

older girls on the team knew she was athletic, so they told her and

her friends to go out for the team.

Their first year in frosh/soph, they won the league.

“When I started playing, some of the older girls started noticing

me,” Taylor said. “They said I had potential, and the next year they

brought me up [to varsity].”

In the four years Taylor has been playing field hockey for Newport

Harbor, she has been involved in four league titles -- a frosh/soph

title, and three varsity titles, as well as three TOC title-game

appearances and one TOC championship.

Taylor played soccer before she started playing field hockey --

now she does both. But if she were to choose one from the other, she

would choose field hockey.

Now that the field hockey season is over, though, she will delve

into her second-favorite sport starting next week.

The end of this year’s field hockey season also brings the end of

Taylor’s high school hockey career. The team will be split apart and

reloaded for next year, and the seniors will be gone, but the end of

high school doesn’t bring the end of Taylor’s field hockey days.

“I’m hoping to get a scholarship,” she said. “I know there are so

many players out there who are better than me, but I’m challenging

myself to be just as good.”

Taylor plans to get that scholarship, even if she has to find the

recruiters herself.

Currently, she is setting up a team consisting of some of her

Newport squad, and some of Newport’s TOC rival squad,

Harvard-Westlake, to compete in the National Field Hockey Festival in

Florida -- a recruiting camp for high school field hockey players

(Thanksgiving weekend).

Her coach, Cross, knows Taylor is ready to play college field

hockey.

“It’s hard to say this with a team of 22 girls,” Cross said. “But

everybody knows Jenny [was] the best player on this team.”