FAN: ‘Trust’ was the hidden skill that propelled Taft field hockey to 2023 NEPSAC A Champions; head coach Rachel Beam explains why establishing it is important

Trust is developed and battle tested.

It’s vital to a team’s overall success. And, in sports, its power can make dreams come true.

“I have truly never been on a more positive, hard-working, and trusting team,” Taft School graduate Maisy Ricciardelli said of the 2023 Big Red Rhinos season.

Ricciardelli, a freshman on the Boston College field hockey team, was one of the team captains. Going undefeated in The Founders League, and throughout the entire season, to claim the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council Championship in Class A is a memory she won’t quickly forget.

Taft went 20-0-1. During the regular season, they averaged 6.1 goals per game, and .94 goals against. The Rhinos outscored their opponents 121-20.

The tone for success was set at the first introductions in April last year, head coach Rachel Beam said. Beam, a transplant assistant college coach from upstate New York, said she had never worked at a boarding school prior to accepting her new position.

Her LinkedIn profile made her stand out, which is how Taft tapped her, however, it’s also what’s not written on her profile, or resume, that makes her even more valuable. When she met her two captains, Ricciardelli and Truus van Wees, trust was immediately forged.

“We have all different personalities and backgrounds, but we all get along so well,” van Wees told Female Athlete News. “Everyone brings a different role to the team and when we come all together, we are one.”

Beam, who had been an assistant coach at SUNY New Paltz, moved to Connecticut over a year ago packed with gems of life experience. She didn’t personally know any of the 18 girls looking to her for leadership, and she said they didn’t know her either.

The 26-year-old said she wanted to move beyond being consequential strangers but not without building a strong rapport.

“I came in without really knowing anything about the girls,” Beam said, adding, “and, they didn’t know anything about me. I was really fortunate to be welcomed by our two captains, Maisy Ricciardelli, who’s going to Boston College, and Truus van Wees, who’s going to the University of Michigan (lacrosse). From day one, we just started with ‘these are our goals, this is our mission, and how are we going to get there.’ We just talked about the process, and there was never a moment that the girls didn’t just believe.”

Beam played at Pace from 2016-18 and then transferred to SUNY New Paltz 2018-20. Throughout college, she coached club field hockey, which included holding Futures practices or what is now known as USA Field Hockey’s Nexus program. She commuted up to an hour round trip daily to teach at a Pine Bush School District high school and then coach NCAA Division III field hockey.

“Taft reached out,” she said. “They said, ‘we’d love you to teach math here.’ It was a marriage of the two things I wanted to do.”

Beam accepted the job interview with the mindset that she’d “humor” the idea of working at Taft.

“I didn’t go to a boarding school,” Beam said. “I went to a public school. I didn’t know much about private school life. The captains gave me a tour. And, I was like, I need to jump in on this. And, I was like, ‘wow,’ what a great community. I want to be part of this.”

Field hockey has been in Beam’s family for generations dating back to her grandmother. She played in middle school and high school, and even traveled from upstate New York to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to participate in a club.

“We drove five hours to play,” Beam said. “At the time there weren’t a lot of clubs in upstate New York. We were more like high school teams posing as club teams. I went to high school in the middle of nowhere. I felt odd playing on those clubs, so I picked a club in Harrisburg.”

Beam’s club was East Coast Field Hockey. East Coast field hockey is now defunct. The founder, William Gaudette, was charged in October 2021 with sexual assault of one of his athletes he had coached. Gaudette left Hummelstown, Pennsylvania before the police issued a warrant for his arrest.

Nearly two years after he fled, he was found deceased in September 2023 on a Colorado property, where he had been working as a ranch hand.

When Beam learned of Gaudette’s passing, she said she had already accepted the situation. She said she dealt with her complex feelings when the initial allegations surfaced by talking to a handful of her former club teammates.

“I was involved with the club in eighth grade to my freshman year in college,” Beam said. “Since I was from far away, we would go down with friends and he had a house for international coaches. We would stay there. Friends said they had creepy feelings about that guy. He was methodical on the field hockey side of things. He was very secretive about his life.

“When I first came to Taft, that’s something they told us as faculty. It’s a boarding school. You’re with them all the time. You need to be yourself. They’re going to see through you so quickly. My past coach didn’t do that. I didn’t get to know him outside of field hockey. We never heard anything about his family; they were never around. He was very secretive. I never felt that I truly trusted him. I trusted him to make good decisions on the field, in terms of where everybody should go on the field, but aside from that, there wasn’t really a lot of trust.”

Trust is at the heart of what Beam wants to establish with her athletes.

“I actually wrote my college paper about him,” she said. “We took a lot of international trips. And we were in Germany once. And, after being there for a week and a half, the airport security went on strike. We had checked all of our bags; so, all bags were gone. We had no money, because it was the end of our trip. And, the airport was just frantic, all the flights were cancelled. We were a group of 22. And, I was one of the older kids. And, I remember looking at him and I was like, ‘Bill what are we going to do?’

“At that point, we were sitting outside of McDonald’s using the WiFi to try to contact our families. He just looked at me so calmly, and he was just like, ‘we’ll adapt, we’re gonna figure it out. We’re just going to adapt to the situation. We’re going to make the best decision in the moment.’”

Beam said she considers adaptability as one of her top three strengths, which she said comes specifically from that moment in Germany with Gaudette.

“So, that was a positive moment from him,” she said. “I hope to instill some of those life moments with my players when I can. If something strange happens, I hope to help portray those larger life lessons for them.”

Taft gets underway today in its 2024 preseason.

“Last year, we just started with the basics,” Beam said. “Our first day was right after move-in day. We didn’t have any fitness testing. I just said, ‘let’s just get a feel.’ It was my first time of getting eyes on everybody. We had a lot of new players coming in, too.”

As she started to figure out the athletes, the athletes also were warming up to her.

“I knew Taft was filled with a lot of skilled players and we had a lot of potential,” Beam said. “There was one moment in the season, when I thought, ‘wow, we really have something special.’”

During a team meeting a few weeks in – roster and team layout set – they honed-in again on the team’s overall goal and how they were going to achieve it.

“I started to break everything down,” she said. “I quoted something, and my center back, Rachel Turer, who’s going to Boston University in two years, she raised her hand, and she said, ‘is that from the book “Mind Gym”?’

It was at that moment Beam said she knew she was coaching serious athletes, who were also really focused on mental toughness, too.

“And, from there, I was like, okay, let’s lock in,” Beam said. “Let’s talk more about mental strength and goal setting. They already had a great foundation, let’s take this to the next level.”

August 30 is opening day for Division I college field hockey.

And, now at Boston College, Ricciardelli said some of her favorite moments from her senior year are foundational in her journey: beating Andover in the NEPSAC finals, the team’s early win against Greenwich Academy, and the “huge win” against Deerfield in the NEPSAC quarterfinals.

“Last season, I learned the importance of setting goals,” Ricciardelli said. “Early on in the season, we set goals, both big and small, to help push us. Our team always had something to work toward with an everlasting goal of winning NEPSACs, but we also had smaller scale and personal goals which allowed us to constantly improve and not think too far ahead. I truly believe that these goals helped hold each other accountable, and ultimately, guide us to success.”

She admitted that her trust grew as the season continued.

“My initial thoughts on the season began to shift as the season progressed because of my growing trust in the team,” she said. “As I stated before, this was a special group of girls who really worked for one another and believed in each other. This growing trust and the guidance of our coaches helped express our potential. I was confident we could accomplish a lot.”

Within their own league, Taft plays The Hotchkiss School, Greenwich Academy, and Sacred Heart in Connecticut, which play on water-based turf. And, then farther away, they play Phillips Andover Academy and Noble and Greenough in Massachusetts, tough teams near Boston, Beam said.

Trust, though, last season, carried them all the way to the end.

“There is no better feeling than knowing that you have a full season of fun and excitement ahead of you,” van Wees said about her 2023 season at Taft. “There is definitely pressure that is put on us by our brand of Taft Field Hockey and pressure from ourselves. We always found a way to use that pressure to our advantage and thrive from it. My feelings didn’t change that much as the season progressed. Although, we kept winning and winning, there was added pressure, but we were prepared for everything that came our way.”

One way to drop the pressure prior to the championship game was to play a silly game to get the girls’ minds warmed up.

“We spent 10 minutes playing silly games, get loose, calm these nerves somehow,” Beam said. “And, that made a big difference. And, then after the game, I said to my assistant coaches, I said thank goodness we won. If we spent 10 minutes playing that silly game and lost, I would have been so upset that we lost those 10 minutes.”

Taft went on to defeat Phillips Andover Academy 3-2 in the 2023 NEPSAC Class A Championship. Taft is currently ranked No. 16 nationally by MAX Field Hockey and Phillips Andover Academy is ranked No. 23.

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