FIELD HOCKEY: Female Athlete of the Week: Racheal Marconi lifts Greencastle to 3-game win streak

Just looking at the scoring summary won't tell you how important Racheal Marconi was to Greencastle-Antrim's field hockey team on Saturday.

Despite having just one assist in a pair of games, Marconi was named the Offensive MVP at the Biglerville Tournament, which the Blue Devils won.

"The reason why she was voted the Offensive MVP is because Racheal is a playmaker," Greencastle-Antrim coach Becca Farson said. "She creates corner plays for us. She gets the ball at people's feet, and she can lift the ball in the circle. She's crucial in our corner plays, and she can hit direct shots. She does a lot of stuff to support our team, and that's what the coaches recognized in her at Biglerville."

Marconi is the Public Opinion Female Athlete of the Week.

"It was honestly a complete surprise that I got MVP," Marconi said. "The team is what helped me most, though. We worked together with our flats and throughs. If the defense and midfielders didn't pass me the ball on the right side, we wouldn't have had as many opportunities as we did."

Not only did Marconi help the Blue Devils to the tournament title, she was also a big factor earlier in the week.

Despite trailing Shippensburg 2-0 at halftime on Thursday, Greencastle earned a comeback victory, 3-2, thanks in large part to Marconi.

"At the half, I asked the girls who was going to be the spark," Farson said. "For her to get those two goals, it fired everyone up. One of them was a reverse chip shot, which is extremely hard to do. If she hadn't have gotten those goals, we wouldn't have had the momentum to win the game."

Marconi said, "Both of those were assisted by Jean Hart, and with Jean as a midfielder, she has definitely given us a lot of movement in and out of the circle. I think we were just putting balls in the circle and had some hard shots they weren't expecting."

After a 0-2 start to the season, Greencastle is now on a three-game win streak. The Blue Devils are hoping to use this momentum to continue pushing forward and improving.

"We have this motivation and fire to keep wanting to win more," Marconi said. "The last two years haven't had that great of seasons, but I think this is year is going to be one of our stronger years. Our defense is really strong this year, and we have a lot of quickness with our midfield and our offense."