ALIZA FURNEAUX

BY MATT VINE

WYOMING COUNTY PRESS EXAMINER

Lackawanna Trail senior Aliza Furneaux recently returned from Palm Beach, Fla., where she played in the National Field Hockey Festival.

“I liked it a lot,” Furneaux said. “It was a new venue this year, and it was really nice. My team ended up finishing second in our pool, so we did pretty well.

“It was neat to go because I wasn’t having the pressure of being recruited this year. It was just more for fun because I’m already committed to where I’m going.”

According to Team USA’s website, the National Field Hockey Festival attracts more than 200 teams and more than 3,500 athletes that play in a four-day hockey event.

Furneaux started playing field hockey while she was in fourth grade. Then she got more involved in earlier grades and found her place as a midfielder through her time in high school.

How Furneaux got involved in the festival was through a field hockey club that she participates in called KaPow Hockey Klub in Wilkes-Barre.

According to Furneaux, this field hockey club plays year round at different locations across the area. She said that the team is made up of players from mostly the Wilkes-Barre area.

“We had a tournament to see who would make it on the final roster, and I was picked to be on the team as their midfielder,” Furneaux said.

She stated that when the team arrived to the International Polo Club for the Field Hockey Festival, at Palm Beach County, Fla., her team was randomly put into a pool of other qualified teams from the U.S., Canada, Europe and parts of the Caribbean.

“In the pool, we played six games and our team made it to second place,” Furneaux said.

She plans on attending Lafayette College, after graduation from Trail where she is also a member of the National Honor Society and is the president of student council.

She recently helped coordinate a Toys for Tots dance at the elementary school, where kids could either pay $5 or donate a toy to participate.

The toys and money were then donated to Toys for Tots.

Times-Shamrock writer Conor Foley also contributed to this story.