When Bree Moffett was in first grade, her class was posed with a question that everyone, at some point, is asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Firefighter,” “Doctor,” and “Chef” were among the common answers in the class. Moffett’s answer? Olympian.

The dream hasn’t changed for Moffett since that day. In fact, the memory of that pick has been vivid in her mind. The photo is in some bin in the basement of the Moffetts’ house in Delaware. She hopes to dig it out if and when her name is called.

Field hockey was never really a choice for Bree, who played among the best players in the country at the second annual Longstreth Senior All-American Game in mid-July. Her mom, Loveita, was Team South’s Head Coach, after being named the Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year by MAX Field Hockey.

That honor followed a thrilling season at Smyrna High School in Smyrna, Delaware, where she won the program’s second state title, dethroning defending champion and rival Cape Henlopen in double overtime, 1-0.

The lone goal scorer? Bree Moffett.

Longstreth’s All-American Game in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, was one last chance for the two to work together.

“We got the email, and I saw that [my mom] could be one of our coaches,” said Moffett. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, one last hurrah! It’ll be so much fun! just getting one more chance to be able to get coached by her.”

Loveita was just as excited to have one last chance with her daughter.

“I do feel like field hockey is kind of like a familial sport,” she said. “Like if your mom plays, then you have a higher tendency to play. So it’s pretty cool.”

The Moffett family is no different than those familial tendencies she touches on. Moffett, then named Loveita Wilkinson, played at Michigan from 1995-1999, and eventually became a First Team All-American. She was also named the University’s “M” Women Athlete of the Year in 1999.

“I was the youngest of five, and nobody in my family had ever gone to college before, so I didn’t really know much about college and the process, let alone the athletic recruiting process,” said Loveita. “What drew me to Michigan specifically was their athletic programs. When I was on my visit, I went to an ice hockey game, and I went to gymnastics. I remember thinking to myself that there were so many people – adults, student-athletes, young kids – supporting these athletes in such an energized way, and the stadiums were full; it was just such an experience. So it just felt like home to me.”

Over two decades later, Ann Arbor, Michigan, felt like home to another member of the family. Dru, the older of Loveita’s two daughters, committed to Michigan in September 2022. After appearing in 35 games in Ann Arbor, she’s entering her junior season in Big Blue this fall.

Ann Arbor is home for half of the family. In 2022, no member of the family would be caught dead wearing gear of the Wolverines’ rival, Northwestern. But as Bree and Dru’s dad, Loveita’s husband, Andrew, watched his daughter play in the Longstreth All-American Game, as his wife coached, his shoes were black and purple, reading Wildcats across the back.

That’s because Bree will be a ‘Cat in the fall, joining the program that has competed so strongly against a family legacy program for years in the Big Ten Conference.

“My whole recruiting process, I wanted it to be my own,” said Bree. “My whole family, they wanted me to do what I wanted to do. Nothing that Dru had gone through was the same as what I had gone through. So I felt like it was very eye-opening to see all of the different colleges and stuff that you could go and visit. I never really thought I had to go to Michigan necessarily because my mom and my sister did. I did all my visits, and when I went to Northwestern, it was a beautiful campus. The lake is right there; there’s this little breeze as soon as you walk by the field. Beautiful rooms and libraries that you can sit in. And I really fell in love with this. I talked to a lot of the girls on the team, coaching staff of course, and everybody there just kind of felt like home, like she said, and from then on, I just kind of realized that that’s where I wanted to go.”

Initially, Bree thought she’d want to go to a big school like Michigan, which claims around 35,000 undergraduate students. As she spent time on the Northwestern campus, she started to understand she might vibe with a place that claims fewer than 10,000 undergraduate students, and only spans 240 acres to the 3,279 acres in Ann Arbor.

Football players at school urged her to look into another finalist on her list in Ohio State. When she asked them why, they explained the football prominence that the Buckeyes have put together, holding 60 former players on current NFL rosters.

Her response was simple, as her mom recalls: “I’m not going to school to play football.”

Lately, what Ohio State is to college football, Northwestern has been to college field hockey. Northwestern, as a whole, has had a chokehold on the collegiate women’s sports landscape.

The school has 19 varsity sports, 11 of which are women’s programs. Field Hockey has claimed the NCAA Championship in Field Hockey in 2021, 2024, and 2025, contributing to a tally of 11 women’s NCAA Championships, all since 2000. Six have come since 2020.

“That’s actually another thing that I’m very excited about, just having a school where the sports are women’s focused almost,” said Bree. “Our men’s teams do well, but I feel like the women’s teams with the national championships, even the golf team they won last year, they’re all doing so well. It’s so good to have a group of women around you that have been doing well and have the support systems behind you. It just feels like it kind of heals my inner girl. trying to always be the toughest in the room.”

The resources at Northwestern will allow Bree to chase her Olympic dream, and potentially impress the right people. The Wildcats’ head coach, Tracey Fuchs, is the winningest coach in the school’s history, and served as an assistant on the Team USA staff during the Paris Olympics in 2024.

Two Northwestern players were on that team, Maddie Zimmer and Ashley Sessa.

Sessa and Moffett will share the locker room this fall, Sessa being a senior and one of the best players in the country, and Moffett being a freshman. She’s aware that there is a totem pole that comes along with that. If she wasn’t already, she’s learning from mom.

“You got to be yourself, right?” said Loveita, transforming seamlessly from Coach Moffett talking to a reporter to mom, giving some lessons on what life is about to look like for her daughter with big aspirations. “And if you’re a competitive person, then be that competitive person. Don’t be somebody you’re not, and embrace all those moments. Find your role, show your personality, and be a contributing member to the team. Be humble, right? Like you’re the lowest one on the totem pole. You’re a freshman. You better go get that equipment.”

For years, movie night at the Moffett’s house has looked a little different. Instead of a Disney classic or a comedy special, there’s been a lot of game film and tireless efforts to improve. It’s not just the girls. It’s Andrew, too, who met Loveita in kindergarten and has been there every step of the way. That includes becoming a Level 1 certified field hockey coach, and coaching alongside his wife with the Delaware Sharks Field Hockey Club.

“My dad’s a girl dad,” said Bree. “He had to learn the sport, especially when he married my mom. He learned it through her, and he was able to learn all the rules and everything so well that he’s a great coach as well.”

This year, Friday nights won’t be spent reviewing game film with the girls in the family room. Every weekend, it’ll be spent in travel for Andrew, as he goes to visit either Dru or Bree in competition. As much as Loveita can tag along, she will, but she’s built something special at Smyrna, and isn’t quite ready to give that up.

“We just decided that as a family, we love the sport of field hockey so much, we’re just going to keep giving back,” said Loveita. “It’s given us so much in our lives, every single one of us. I think it’s only fair to kind of continue that dream for some of the other girls.”

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Named to the Field Hockey Head Coach job on January 13, 2026, Hannah Prince might be new to Penn State. She’s a native of Gorham, Maine, a UMass graduate, with coaching stops at New Hampshire, Princeton, Louisville, and most recently, St. Joe’s.

That doesn’t mean she was unfamiliar with the roster when this year’s Nittany Lions took the field on the first day of preseason on August 8th.

The group isn’t quite an “island of misfit toys.” Everyone on Prince’s 25-player roster is qualified to play for the Big Ten program that’s looking for their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2022.

Instead, it’s an “island of revisits” for Prince, who is reconnecting with several players she’s recruited through her own journey in collegiate coaching.

Natalie Freeman, who led the team with 19 points in 2025, was recruited by Prince to go to Louisville out of Marriotts Ridge High School in 2022. That same graduating year, Prince recruited Cam Standish out of Mechanicsburg High School, who transferred from Ohio State to Penn State for her final collegiate season.

The connections don’t finish there. Riley and Kerry O’Donnell, twin sisters from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, attended a clinic in New Jersey that Prince was working. Carly Seal, a South Jersey native who played in all 17 games in Blue & White last year, was there too.

Olivia Marthins, another South Jersey native, scored her first career goal last year as a Nittany Lion against St. Joe’s during her true freshman season. Prince was the SJU Head Coach and recruited Marthins to be a Hawk. During Prince’s time as the Hawks’ coach, she had Lily DeWan, whose sister, Elise, is now on Prince’s team in State College.

Ella Gaitan, who was a Big Ten All-Second Team selection in 2024, has been recruited on three separate occasions by Prince. She was recruited to Louisville out of high school, but chose to begin her college career at Maryland, where she started a total of 31 games across two seasons in 2024 & 2025. In December 2025, Prince reached out to Gaitan, who was in the portal while Prince was still the St. Joe’s head coach. She committed to Michigan instead, but a shift in academic situation led Gaitan to be available over the summer and become the last addition to the roster.

Prince has the roster built, and is clearly familiar with the talent she has on the team. Now, it’s time to do something with it.

Nobody on Penn State’s roster has been to an NCAA Final Four. The pieces of Penn State’s most recent NCAA tournament run, a 2022 trek to the semifinals, are all gone.

“I will absolutely do anything in my power to prepare them, lead them, and give them the tools and confidence that those postseason runs are possible,” said Prince. “They don’t have to have a perfect season to do that. All that I care about is that every day and every game we’re learning. And learning doesn’t always mean it’s pretty, right?”

Once Penn State gets through the regular season, they will be battle-tested. The Nittany Lions will open the season with Virginia, who was upset as the No. 4 seed in last year’s NCAA tournament. National runner-up Princeton is also on the non-conference docket, while defending champion Northwestern will come in Big Ten play and the regular season finale.

“I don’t care at all how many All-Americans, National Team players, postseason appearances, National Championship games, winning national championships. I don’t care about any of that,” Prince said, reciting her message to the team’s leadership group two weeks ago. “It’s a new season, it’s a clean slate. Everyone has a new team. There’s not one team in the country that has the exact same roster. So it is an amazing opportunity to continue on this new era. As much as I want to say we’re writing a new chapter, my goal is to write a whole new book.”

Prince knows the importance of honoring traditions, especially at a place like Penn State that has sponsored field hockey as a varsity sport since 1964. Since then, the Nittany Lions have appeared in the NCAA Tournament 30 times, including seven NCAA Final Four appearances and two National Championship appearances.

As Prince looks out of her office window overlooking the Penn State Field Hockey Complex, she can see the history. “Char Morett Curtiss Field” is etched in cursive white turf, honoring the head coach of the program from 1987 to 2022, earning 530 wins in the process. The scoreboard on the west end of the field is named the “Tara Maguire Scoreboard,” honoring the 1997 graduate, who was a First Team All-American as a Nittany Lion.

“We want to honor traditions of the past,” said Prince. “I want the girls to be proud to speak their goals out loud, work harder than they thought imaginable, and have the confidence to know that if we can play as a collective group and have that belief and that mindset that we can beat anyone.”

While Prince’s goals today are focused on the field, there’s a long-term vision in recruiting as well. Nine players from the US Olympic Field Hockey roster in Paris 2024 were Pennsylvania natives. Only one, Phia Gladieux, is a Penn Stater.

“I think our biggest goal is to keep the best Pennsylvania kids in Pennsylvania,” said Prince. “I think that people are really excited about this new kind of staff, new direction that we’re going. So I’m confident we’ll be able to do that.”

MAX Field Hockey’s Top 10 players for the Class of 2027 includes eight Pennsylvania natives, but no Penn State commits. Northwestern and North Carolina, who’ve run the table in terms of national titles for the last eight years, each claim three on the list. Boston College claims two, both Pa. natives, while Rutgers and Virginia both get one.

Prince knows what she’s up against.

“I think the biggest pitch is two things. One, the experience, resources, staff, support, just energy about the school sells itself,” said Prince on her selling point for the nation’s best to come to Happy Valley. “If they come on a visit, they can experience it. That is, to me, second to none. What we can provide here for an overall experience as a student-athlete. And then, being a part of building, being a part of something, wanting to be like one of those players that comes in and leaves a legacy. Players that want to come in and help us to be better than we were the year before, and have that mentality of, ‘I’m never going to settle, like, until we have the trophy.’”

Prince will begin authoring that “whole new book” with two scrimmages, facing Bucknell and Penn on August 18 and 22, respectively. Bucknell provides convenience in location, while Penn plays a “really great tactical game” that will help PSU try out some of their own tactics.

“What’s great about scrimmages is getting the opportunity to just try things, and it’s no pressure and gets you prepared for the game,” said Prince. “But we’ll treat those scrimmages just like we would a game in terms of our preparation.”

Penn State’s opening scrimmage with Bucknell is set for 12 p.m. at the Penn State Field Hockey Complex, the first page of the new book, and new beginnings in State College.