As most people familiar with Middlebury athletics know, the field hockey team has seen sensational success in recent years, having captured eight NCAA championships in the past nine years and an astonishing seven consecutive titles. But few know the captivating story beyond the scoreboard: What does their time off the field together look like when cheering crowds have dispersed? What is the secret to their success?
These are the questions that Gina Driscoll ’25, a Film and Media Culture major and a member of the women’s lacrosse team, set out to answer. She received permission to start shooting the field hockey team at the beginning of their fall 2023 season, when they had already won five of their consecutive national titles. Over an intensive 45 days of filming, more than 40 taped interviews with players, coaches and staff members, and 250 hours of footage from the 2023 season — which ultimately yielded two more NCAA trophies — Driscoll is deep into her ambition to create a two-hour documentary that promises to unveil the soul of the team.
In a packed Dana Auditorium on Friday evening, members of the team, coaches, staff members and crowds of friends and supporters gathered to watch a 20-minute preview of Driscoll’s project, titled “Chasing Greatness.” She managed to parr the larger story of the team’s accomplishments in 2023 down to a sneak peak of what is to come in the full documentary.
Before endeavoring on this project, Driscoll had little experience with documentary filmmaking, only having produced highlight reels of athletes. Inspired by the Hardknock sports documentaries on HBO, she was determined to recreate something similar and turned to the internet to teach herself how to level up skills to tackle a bigger project.
“I remember thinking, I think we’ve got a story here with the Midd field hockey team, so I just thought, why don’t I just pick up a camera and shoot that a little bit,” she said in her remarks before the screening.
Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Hector Vila, Driscoll’s advisor for the project, remarked to the audience on the several months of hard, detail-obsessive work she poured into the project. He emphasized that this type of film production is usually done by a full production team, not by a single college student-athlete.
“What’s really impressive as Gina jumped into something that she never did before, what comes through is … Gina’s talent and Gina’s ability to actually see,” Vila said. “You can hold a camera or you can take a shot or you can write some things down, but the most important thing is how well you can see things, and Gina has a magnificent eye.”
The preview kicks off with historic footage of the team from 1998, then jumps to their next win in 2015 and then to 2017, the year that launched their seven-year streak. The 2023 footage begins in August, with Head Coach Katharine DeLorenzo welcoming the first year students at the time.
“You're already here,” DeLorenzo said, addressing the seven new team members. “Don’t try to prove anything to us. Just give us yourself. We want you just the way you are, but we want the best of you.”
The montage footage of the team’s early days shows them receiving their crisp new uniforms, meeting for strategic classroom sessions, bonding with their teammates, stretching on the field with the Green Mountains in the backdrop, conducting warm-ups and drills and gym training sessions. With more of DeLorenzo’s motivational advice narrating these scenes, they are backlit by the electrifying knowledge of the historic season about to unfold.
Then, the game reels begin: With players scooping and driving ball after ball into the other team’s net with satisfying “clunks” and the immediate blow of the referee’s whistle, the Panthers seamlessly won game after game in the lead up to the NCAA Championships. The documentary then shifts and chronicles their experience traveling 424 miles to Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pa. to compete in the national championships — one they hadn’t necessarily anticipated making.
Scenes from the games leading up to the Panthers scoring their NCAA championship win against beautiful fall foliage feel invigorating, but also reveal the anticipation the team was in as they approached their victory. Viewers know what the result will be, but the Panthers in these clips were still in limbo. For every face deep in concentration or frustration, there were countless recordings of their smiles and celebrations. Holding up their trophy, the team jumps up and down in slow motion, capturing the ecstasy of hard work converted to success.
“I’ve always had this phrase, since the first year I was coaching, that you can’t ever complain about something that you brag about,” DeLorenzo said. “If we’re going to be able to take a 14 hour bus ride together, stay in a hotel together, figure out somebody else’s field and be able to celebrate those gifts and victories, then we cannot say that there’s anything about that that we wish didn’t happen.”
Footage of the team dancing together in the bus on their long trip and laughing for minutes on end in their hotel lobby demonstrated how their close bond pushes them through weekends with high stakes. Driscoll captured small moments that may otherwise go unnoticed, such as the team members braiding each others’ hair while waiting for the bus on the sidewalk.
“To see a team that was so close knit being able to accomplish something so big while having so much fun was surprising honestly,” Driscoll said. “You look at a team that has won five back to back championships, you think, you know, like these guys they have to have a lot of pressure on their backs and they’d better be pretty stressed about it, but in interviewing every single one of them, none of them are thinking about the next championship, they’re thinking about the next practice, the next game.”
The final version of “Chasing Greatness” will include personal stories from hours of revealing interviews to reflect the true experience of Middlebury field hockey — what it truly means to have an undefeated season.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is the Editor in Chief.
Madeleine previously served as a managing editor, local editor, staff writer and copy editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with a focus on German and English literatures and was a culture journalism intern at Seven Days for the summer of 2025.
