Marauder Moments: The 12 seconds that defined a season

Twelve seconds. From the stick of Megan Donlan to Champayne Hess, to Katie Zapp, back to Hess and into the goal, all it took was 12 seconds. What can be accomplished in 12 seconds? At the end of this sentence, you will have been reading this article for approximately 12 seconds. Champayne Hess played 1,129 minutes or 67,740 seconds in her senior season alone, and that’s not counting practice, film and training sessions. Who knows how many more seconds passed during her field hockey career?

What’s 12 seconds? It’s enough time for one last run, pouring out the last of your energy reserve. It’s enough time to stress your opponent to the breaking point. It’s enough time to win a game, to fulfill a mission. 

The 2014 Millersville field hockey team won the NCAA Division II Championship—the only NCAA title won by a women’s program at Millersville. You are reading this story, so you probably already knew that. You might even know the team won 20 games. You might remember the 1-0 score against LIU Post in the championship game and the championship parade down George Street. But often lost to the memory of an entire season are brief, singular, and even spectacular moments, without which, games are lost, history isn’t made, championships aren’t won, and legacies aren’t defined. 

On Dec. 4 in the NCAA Semifinals in Louisville, Kentucky, Millersville seniors Champayne Hess and Katie Zapp connected for an overtime game-winning goal that wonderfully depicted the 2014 Marauders: a team of skill, effort, determination, and above all, trust. 

“Trust doesn’t come lightly for people, but trust was a big part of our team,” said Millersville head coach Shelly Behrens.

“It’s because went through the struggle together,” said Hess. “This is what we wanted, and to play with classmates, it made it that much more special because we came in together and went out together.”

Now a nationally respected program, Millersville field hockey was anything but when Hess enrolled at Millersville in 2010 as part of Behrens’ second recruiting class. Zapp, along Alicia Youtz, Sarah Bomberger, Rachel Dickinson, Randi Boyd and Lauren Sotzin, linchpins on the 2014 championship team, arrived in 2011, and transfer Hannah Whitman joined the class in 2013. As freshman in 2011, the group experienced a nightmarish 1-9 PSAC record. A remarkable and dramatic turnaround was imminent. 

In 2012, the Marauders won seven of their last eight games to shockingly reach the PSAC Championship game. A 4-0 loss to West Chester spurred the Marauders on to a 19-3 record and a PSAC Championship (the first at Millersville since 1986) in 2013. That class of Marauders sparked a 12-win improvement in two years, and as they entered their senior season, they were openly vocal about the next goal: a national championship. 

“We had a notecard. We wrote (national championship) at the top of the notecard, and underneath of that we wrote what we needed to do to get that goal,” said Zapp. “I still have it in my field hockey binder. You look at it every day so it’s always on your mind. When you are tired and there are five minutes left in the game, even if we are winning 4-0 or losing 5-0, we are still working toward that goal. It was just part of your day.”

For the schedule poster, the team requested the phrase “On a Mission.” The declaration of expectations were clear, defined and discussed often. 

“In the spring of 2013, getting ready for the season, we come into the team meeting, early in the morning, and I handed out papers to put their goals down. 2013 was great. We won a PSAC Championship, got to a final four and got a taste. Now we know the way,” said Behrens. “Going into these guys’ senior year, they handed me a sheet of paper (with their goals). It wasn’t being brash or cocky, it was being honest and being willing to put yourself out there for each other. That’s what this group did.”

“We instilled that in each other,” said Hess. “Not everyone is on the same page every single moment of the day. If someone fell short, we always picked each other up. We kept reminding each other that this is what we want, and this is what we need to do no matter how tough. We always had that in the back of our minds. We had a goal, and we were going to complete it.”

The talk wasn’t lip service or empty words. Hess and her classmates practiced and played in such a way as if every moment was a national championship. That was no more evident than in the 12 seconds that preceded Hess’ game-winning goal against West Chester in the national semifinals. But all season, overtime was Millersville’s time—a time for the team with more skill, more effort, more determination, and more trust.

Millersville played seven overtime games in 2014, winning six. Of Hess’ four game-winning goals, three came in overtime. The first significant match-up of the season came on Sept. 23 at home against West Chester. It was a battle between the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams in the country—one of three that Millersville would play that season. West Chester took a 2-0 lead, but Millersville battled to tie. After nearly 50 scoreless minutes, in overtime, Hess subbed in at the perfect moment, picked up the ball at midfield and outran the defense for a one-on-one opportunity that she converted. Hess possessed elite speed and athleticism, so the seven on seven overtime scenario fit her talents perfectly. Later, in the national quarterfinal against No. 3 Shippensburg, Zapp scored the game’s first goal, and in the second overtime, Hess again collected the ball at midfield, outraced defenders, and while her initial shot was saved, she smashed the rebound into the goal to push Millersville into the NCAA Semifinals. 

Field hockey is a sport in which a team can control and statistically dominant a game for 70 or more minutes but still lose because of an unlucky bounce or an errant redirection. Winning in overtime so consistently, however, is more than luck. It’s skill, effort, determination and trust. 

“Let’s leave happy,” said Hess of her knack for finishing in overtime. “Our teammates trusted me a lot so I felt like I needed to get it done.”

“We had players who trusted the plan,” said Behrens. “They had roles and jobs, but they knew they had freedom in those roles. It became a confidence. ‘It’s overtime? Cool. Less people on the field, more space, we got this.’”

Looking at the notecard each day, with the national championship goal written at the top, served as a second-by-second reminder in late-game scenarios. 

“Typically, by the end of (overtime games) I was so tired,” said Zapp. “The way we played, our offense plays a lot of defense, almost like a press. And when you take players off the field, it’s one less forward and one less mid, so there’s a lot more running. It’s unique in that you realize how badly you want or how badly you don’t want something. If you want something enough you are going to work for it. It forced us to go to that place where you don’t really like to be, but when it paid off, it really paid off.”

While still two wins away from the foremost prize, the win over Shippensburg was special in its own right. The Marauders had never advance past the NCAA Division II Quarterfinals before, and the win followed a gut-punch loss to West Chester in the PSAC Championship. West Chester and Millersville—the two teams that occupied the top spots in the national rankings nearly all season--played four times in 2014. The rivals split overtime games in the regular season, but in the conference championship, at West Chester, the Golden Rams used long smashes to create number advantages and open runs at goal. The strategy worked effectively. Millersville ranked No. 1 in the nation in goals against average, and Sotzin, the goalkeeper, led the nation in shutouts and was the reigning Division II defensive player of the year. West Chester still scored three goals on just five shots and three penalty corners. It was the only time all year Millersville had been shut out and the only time it allowed more than two goals. 

“I was very frustrated,” said Zapp. “It felt like we were fighting so hard in that game, and we couldn’t get anything. As the game went on, it was becoming more evident that it wasn’t happening. It was the first time that season where our plan didn’t work. We had time after that to work it out and figure it out. In hindsight it was the best thing that could have happened to us, but in the moment you just want the result that you want…Shelly normally says you get 24 hours to pout about it, and I definitely took that bus ride home and pouted about it.”

That Millersville could bounce back from such a loss was a testament to its resolve. With the PSAC Championship, West Chester earned the No. 1 seed in the region. Millersville instead had to stew on the loss for nine days and refocus for a Shippensburg team that had won the national championship the year before. Beating Shippensburg then brought the Marauders one step closer to ultimately accomplishing the mission it so often discussed, but standing in the way was again West Chester, 19 days removed from its PSAC title rout. West Chester had gotten the Marauders twice already, so Behrens faced a dilemma when developing the game plan: change what hadn’t worked in the previous two losses while not losing the identify of a successful team that she trusted.

“I tend to overthink everything,” said Behrens. “But it was trusting in our plan. We had the right ideas, we were doing the right things, we just weren’t getting the results. Sometimes you have to accept that and move on. We looked at West Chester like this is a whole different season. This is the final four, we are at Louisville, and it’s just another game. It happened to be against a team we know really well. We didn’t have to change a whole lot, we just needed to have a mindset shift in a couple of areas. I thought we’d had a really great practice, the kids were loose, and I’ve learned to stay out of their way and enjoy.”

Four games in a season against one team, and the fourth coming on a national stage, proved mentally and emotionally taxing for the players.

“There’s a different kind of mental focus going on,” said Hess. “It’s like, can we just get rid of this team already?”

The action in the national semifinal started quickly, and when Alicia Youtz deflected a Lauren Gerhart reverse shot into the goal just 4:48 into the game, it gave Millersville a shot of confidence. While West Chester out-shot Millersville 9-3 and held a 6-2 advantage on penalty corners in the first half, the score remained locked at 1-1. Play settled into the midfield in the second 35 minutes. Sotzin made a save with seven minutes left, and with no time remaining, West Chester drew a penalty corner, setting up a nail-biting finish to regulation. From the top of the circle, West Chester looked to the left post. Donlan and Sotzin both read the play and the pass went wide, sending the game into overtime—exactly where Millersville wanted it. Crunch time—sudden victory with a trip to the national championship game on the line. That was the Marauders’ time. Six of the seven overtime starters were seniors. It was time to lean on four years of earned trust and a shared determination. 

“For the most part, it’s getting out of your own head,” said Hess of playing in high-pressure situations. “Do what you know. You are there for a reason so do what you know, what you’ve been taught. Don’t play with worry that you are going to mess up, play freely. Playing freely, that’s when you get the best results.”

There’s a sports cliché: “the team that won was the team that wanted it more.” The leave-it-all-on-the-field effort from Hess and Zapp from when the scoreboard at Trager Stadium read 12:22 and stopped at 12:10 makes it, at least in that moment, impossible to deny the cliché as true. 

Millersville received a free hit after a West Chester foul. Donlan took the self-start two steps behind midfield and without a pause, she pushed a pass 20 yards to an open Hess. Hess immediately redirected her dribble to the right sideline. Zapp, who only moments before had called for a sub, left Gerhart waiting at the table, forgot about the fatigue and pushed ahead of Hess. As the two Marauder seniors advanced nearly side-by-side, a trio of purple jerseys collapsed into the center of the field in front of the goalkeeper. Hess pressed forward. She crossed in front of one West Chester defender and drew a double team from the center back and midfielder, who had just then made it a five-on-two in favor of West Chester. Zapp, stilling running, crossed inside the circle near the end line behind the West Chester defense. An instant before the West Chester defenders trapped Hess, she turned her stick and slid a pass to her right, just beyond the reach of the Zapp. With the goalkeeper stepping out to cut off the pass, Zapp dove headfirst with stick outstretched, rerouting the ball back into the center of the circle. Unlike the West Chester defenders, Hess never slowed her pace. The backside defender crept into the line of Zapp’s pass with hopes of clearing the ball, but Hess matched Zapp’s diving effort with one of her own and poked the ball past the last line of defense into an empty cage. Millersville would play for, and win, the national championship two days later.

It was a brilliant display of skill, effort, determination, and trust in the most crucial moment of the season. 

“I honestly don’t know how I got from the top of the circle down to pass it to Katie,” said Hess. “It was playing freely; you let go…Everything aligned.”

“I noticed that West Chester was subbing right when (Donlan) made that pass, so it opened up everything,” said Zapp. “Once Champ got the ball, I knew I had to go as fast as I could, which is probably half her speed, but I knew I had to get in front of her because she’s so quick and so unpredictable with how she tricks the other team. They had no idea she was going to slide that pass. When she did that, I knew that I had to touch the ball. I wasn’t fast enough to get there, so I just had to touch it. It went back to Champ, she followed through, right through the goal. We talked about that all the time. It was the best moment of that entire year.”

“To this day, I still trust these ladies,” said Behrens. “They are the most amazing example of what it means to be a Millersville field hockey player. I see the ball get up to Champ, and Katie was doing double time to get up there. If Champ just stopped, the ball goes past her. We joke that she had no right to score that goal, but it was a phenomenal effort by these two women and their teammates.”

The play also showed how skills and instruction drilled to perfection gives an advantage in the moments that matter most. Zapp and Hess did that over and over throughout their careers, combining for 19 game-winning goals.  

“Shelly said it all the time: ‘the one more, the extra effort’” said Zapp. “It’s hard to really understand what the coach is trying to get into your head, but in that moment, for Champ and I, it’s like OK, that’s what that means."

“That’s a program defining play,” said Behrens. “If it’s March Madness, that’s the One Shining Moment. You have people in the right place doing the right play and the right time, doing their best. They just did what we practice every day, and it happened at the right time, for sure. It was an amazing goal, no doubt.”

Emboldened by the victory, Millersville shutout the nation’s top-scoring offense in LIU Post for the title. After the dramatic finish against archrival West Chester, it seemed inevitable. A mission that started in a preseason meeting and completed in Louisville spanned nine months or nearly 24 million seconds. But sometimes, all it takes is 12 seconds to make the difference.