The night before each game, Ladue senior Samantha Hillman asks ChatGPT to produce a field hockey poem. She provides the opponent and the location and lets artificial intelligence handle the rest before sending it out to her teammates.
“It will write a whole, inspirational poem that rhymes,” Hillman said. “It makes the team laugh, but it also gets us going.”
Ladue (13-6) has had it going all season, earning the No. 6 seed in the 2024 Midwest Field Hockey Tournament which begins this week with first round games. The Rams begin play Saturday in the Round of 16 against the winner of Westminster and Edwardsville.
All season, Ladue has shown it belongs in the conversation with the perennial final four attendees. The Rams lost by one goal to Cor Jesu and MICDS, by two to Villa Duchesne and by three to John Burroughs.
“We came into this season hungry, trying to prove that we belong on the same stage as all the private schools,” Hillman said. “Our goal is to compete, attack every game and show that we have a really strong team.”
A key to the Rams’ success has been their offensive firepower. Ladue is one of two teams to score multiple goals against top-seeded John Burroughs, and one of two teams to score four goals against No. 4 seed MICDS.
Led by 24 goals from junior Victoria Derdoy, the Rams are averaging 3.78 goals per game with five different players finding the back of the cage at least eight times this season.
“That’s one of our strengths, especially with the speed that we have on the forward line. We have a lot of different people who can be an offensive threat and that’s hard for other teams when there’s more than one person to mark,” said Ladue first-year coach Leah Jones, a former assistant at Villa Duchesne.
Hillman is tied for sixth in the area with 15 assists. Her ability to negotiate the midfield allows Derdoy and sophomore Annie Tilghman to attack the perimeter and baseline. The chemistry between the three produces waves of offensive pressure.
“We know each other, we know where we’re going to be and we set each other up for success,” Hillman said. “We’re not looking for individual goals, we’re looking for team goals. The team dynamic is definitely there.”
That team dynamic became apparent quickly when Ladue outscored its four opponents 15-2 at the 26th Gateway Classic to earn the Pool F championship in early September.
“At the Gateway Classic we had a really strong start. If other schools weren’t taking us seriously, I think that they started to then,” Derdoy said.
The Rams won their first six games before they faced final-four staple, St. Joseph’s. The Angels dominated on the grass surface and the game quickly got away from the Rams in an 8-0 defeat.
“That pushed us for when we played teams like Burroughs and Villa because we didn’t want to lose like that again. We wanted to play at the same level as those final four teams,” Derdoy said.
A turning point came during a trip to Louisville, where Ladue faced defending Kentucky state champion Christian Academy. The Rams earned several penalty corners and took the lead before eventually losing 3-2.
“We were out-of-town, having that fun energy with no real stakes, but performing at that level really set us up and boosted us for the rest of the season,” Hillman said.
John Burroughs had shut out five consecutive opponents, including state semifinalists Villa Duchesne and Cor Jesu, before Derdoy and Hillman tallied goals in a 5-2 setback to the Bombers.
Ladue lost 5-4 to MICDS on Sept. 25, lost 3-1 to Villa Duchesne on Oct. 10 and lost 3-2 to Cor Jesu on Oct. 17, each time showing that it could go toe-to-toe with the top programs in the area.
“I love that competition. It pushes us to play even harder when we play against the top players and the top teams,” Derdoy said.
In a rematch with Westminster, the team that knocked Ladue out of the playoffs last season, the Rams won 8-2 with their first six goals coming from six different players.
“I don’t think they forgot last year,” Westminster coach Nancy Schmer said. “They are very fast, they stay spread out and then they crash the goal. My goalie had 27 saves, but they kept coming back and back and back.”
And now, with the postseason upon them, the Rams hope they can get back to where the season began – Sportport International – after earning their first trip to the state semifinals in program history.
“Hopefully, we’ll see that water turf field again,” Derdoy said. “Maybe we’ll make a poem about it.”
State Field Hockey Tournament Bracket:
