This field hockey season, Wayne Hills Field Hockey welcomes Madison Hanna to coach the team!

Hanna is from Riverdale, New Jersey, just a ten minute drive from Wayne. She started playing field hockey in third grade. Hanna says, “my best friend asked me to join a team with her and I stuck it out from there on out … I played for almost fourteen years.”

Hanna attended Pompton Lakes High School, where she played varsity field hockey and varsity softball with some amazing stats. Where does her passion for softball come from? Hanna says, “when I was super little, I had cousins that played baseball so it wasn’t really an option for me. I played softball for almost seventeen years.” Softball was not just important to her then, but it still manages to play a part in her life today, and she has been able to “still play a summer league to this day.”

With the stats she had in softball and field hockey, you can expect an offer to play in college to come around. She left the Garden State to play field hockey and softball for Castleton University in Vermont where she played midfield. She had 26 goals, 5 assists, and 1247 minutes played in her career.

Hanna says, “I loved every second of college field hockey. If I could go back, I would … Yes, school and life would get overwhelming while playing two sports in college, but what helped me the most was going to practice and forgetting about every worrying I had going on.” Hanna was also able to learn some valuable lessons playing college field hockey and softball. She says, “playing two sports, time management was a big factor to my day-to-day life and still helps me stay organized to this day. ”

Hanna values team chemistry. Hanna says, “I had the most amazing experience thanks to my coaches and fellow teammates who pushed me to who I am every single day … My teammates were my family and they made any situation less stressful.” Her experience with her teammates in college definitely plays into her coaching style and activities she organizes such as team-bonding.

Hanna did a team-bonding activity after practice one day, where players chose 1 teammate’s name out of a hat and the players made a bracelet for the person they chose with lettered beads that spelled out a positive attribute which described that player chosen. Freshman Zeynep Ozgun, a member of the WHFH team, says, “It was really helpful in … making us feel more like a family.”

For the fall 2025 season, Hanna plans to “have a winning season and to help out the team by being someone who is young and understands the game of field hockey at a different level.” She also wants to push players on WHFH to better themselves individually by “making everyone even better than they were.”