Hannah Prince ready to write 'whole new book' as new Penn State head field hockey coach
The Nittany Lions are saying "Game on" to a challenging 2026 season in Happy Valley.
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 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.