Deirdre McKiernan was two months old the first time she was wheeled by her mom into an ice hockey rink in a double stroller with her older sister Kate. Older brother Patrick and sister Mary both played hockey, following their father Brendan, who played the sport at Assumption.
Naturally, Deirdre began to play when she was 3. Youth hockey, club hockey, knee hockey in the McKiernans’ basement with her brothers and sisters, H-O-R-S-E on the net in their driveway in Glastonbury.
Patrick played in high school and is now playing at Assumption. So did Mary, who is a senior at Assumption. Kate played for the East Catholic co-operative team and now she is at Kent and will play at Bowdoin next season.
Deirdre, a senior captain from Glastonbury for the East Catholic co-op (11-3), has 10 assists and six goals for the Storm, which is comprised of players from East Catholic, Glastonbury, South Windsor and Tolland.
Deirdre McKiernan, a senior on the East Catholic co-op ice hockey team, comes from an ice hockey family but she will be playing field hockey in college next year. (Photo courtesy of Brendan McKiernan).
But she is heading down a different hockey path than the rest of her family after high school, choosing turf over ice. She started to play field hockey for Glastonbury High as a freshman – and as an ice hockey player, didn’t understand that you couldn’t use both sides of the stick at the first tryout.
But she adapted and learned and now she is the program’s all-time leading scorer (78 goals) and will be playing field hockey at Salve Regina in Newport, R.I., after she graduates.
“It’s great to see her come into her own and do her own thing,” said her mother, Liz McKiernan, the only non-hockey player in the family (she did go to Assumption, however, where she met Brendan). “Her leadership has skyrocketed with her success.
“Her siblings are all proud of her, too. They’re all such hockey people, if you go to a (hockey) game with them, they’re all very critical of each other, but nobody knows field hockey so they’re like, ‘She looks great!’”
Deirdre McKiernan (third from left) is the youngest of the McKiernan siblings to play ice hockey but she has broken from her family tradition and will be playing field hockey in college. From left to right, Patrick, Kate, Deirdre and Mary McKiernan. (Photo courtesy of Brendan McKiernan)
Deirdre had never played before but there were a lot of similarities and she had heard good things about the Glastonbury field hockey program, which has been successful over the years.
“When I started, something just clicked,” she said. “I just played to try something new. I thought, ‘I’ll just do this for fun, why not?’
“Freshman year was a good season and I decided I liked it. Sophomore year I started playing club in the spring, then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m ready to make the switch.’ I was planning on playing (ice) hockey in college, that was my dream. But after that, I was like, ‘I’m going to play field hockey, this is what I like more.’ It was new, different. All my siblings played hockey so I felt like I was following in their footsteps, and I wanted to do something else, branching off a little.”
Once she figured out the basics, the game came naturally.
“Her hand-eye (coordination) and her ability to do 3D skills – because in ice hockey you can lift the puck – those are things she can do that are more innate that may not be innate to someone who doesn’t play ice hockey,” Glastonbury field hockey coach Maureen Perkins said. “It’s cool to see when something she did in ice hockey transfers.”
“She can move the ball in really small spaces. In ice hockey, you sometimes have to do that. Her hand-eye is just incredible – something that one kid would take five seconds to do, she would take one or two. She knows when she needs to pass, when she can keep the ball. She knows when to use what skill.
“It’s nothing that I’ve taught her. She just knows.”
The last two years, Deirdre scored 30-plus goals for Glastonbury field hockey, which won 65 games over her four seasons and advanced to the state semifinals both her freshman and sophomore years. Her first three years, she played with Addison Infante, who went on to play at UConn. She studied Infante and how she played.
Her sister Mary said she recalled a conversation she had with their father about Deirdre when she was younger.
“He said when she was young, she was the most natural born goal scorer out of the four of us,” Mary said. “That just developed in her as a field hockey player more so than it did in hockey.”
Growing up, Deirdre played hockey with her brothers and sisters but her father said when she started playing field hockey, he noticed a difference.
“As much as she liked hockey – she would go out and practice when her siblings were outside practicing – it was more of a chore,” Brendan said. “I can’t tell you how many times I looked out the window and saw her with her field hockey stick, just dribbling the ball on her own with nobody encouraging her to do it. She just wanted to go do it. Or in the wintertime, in front of the fire, just stickhandling the field hockey ball while she’s watching television. She just gravitated to the sport.”
So this is her last season of ice hockey – unless she is able to play two sports at Salve Regina. She would like to but is not sure if she can and field hockey is obviously the top priority for her.
“She’s an excellent leader, a high IQ hockey player,” East Catholic ice hockey coach Frank Usseglio said. “She definitely could play in college.”