EHS senior Reese Holcomb was a two-time captain of EHS’s varsity field hockey team and four-year member of the EHS varsity girls’ lacrosse team. This fall, she will be attending Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire as a psychology major and will play on both the girls’ varsity lacrosse and field hockey teams.
Holcomb has been interested in playing lacrosse in college for several years.
“I definitely started [the recruiting process] a little on the later side. I knew I wanted to play lacrosse in college, probably [since] my freshman year [of high school]. I really started the recruiting process my sophomore summer, which was when I was playing on a club team, and I started to hear from some colleges.”
In the spring of 2024, Holcomb tore her ACL, a ligament in her knee, playing lacrosse. Although she got surgery for her injury over the summer, it can take a year or more for an athlete to recover fully from such a drastic injury and return to sports.
“Before, I never really knew which division I wanted to [aim] towards and with the higher divisions attending showcases and prospects is really important,” Holcomb said. “After the injury, we had the whole summer planned out for showcases and prospect camps, so that got cut short. Then I was only able to use my film to send to colleges. That definitely turned things around.”
Holcomb did not originally plan on attending college in the Northeast.
“It took actually going to far away colleges to realize that I wanted to be closer to home,” Holcomb said. “We drove down to Virginia over the summer, and I toured three colleges there. I realized that I couldn’t do the drive, and flying is expensive”
Colby-Sawyer women’s lacrosse and field hockey coach, Emily Dewdney, reached out to Holcomb regarding lacrosse.
Hannah Himes is currently a senior at Colby-Sawyer and graduated from Essex in 2021.
“Colby-Sawyer was actually the one to reach out to me because Hannah Himes played there, and I just got to know them better, and I really liked it there.”
Holcomb was initially planning on playing only lacrosse in college, but since the girls’ lacrosse coach at Colby-Sawyer is also the field hockey coach, playing field hockey came up naturally, encouraging Holcomb to commit to playing both sports.
After Holcomb was recruited, she was invited to an early acceptance day hosted by Colby-Sawyer in the fall where she was interviewed by staff.
“For the early acceptance day, they wanted you to apply through their website, so it was a really easy application. I didn’t even need an essay or any letters of recommendation. I submitted everything, and I attended the early acceptance day, and they talked to you about a whole bunch of stuff, and then you got interviewed by different people there. And at the end of it, they told you if you got accepted or not….I got that [acceptance] letter in the mail in November, but it was a very simple process….[Getting interviewed] ended up being super lowkey; she was just asking me about what I like to do for fun….I was definitely scared before, but once it happened all the nerves just went away.”
Holcomb felt disconnected from the emotions of other high school students as they were going through a more traditional college application process.
“Some [of my friends] are really nervous…I did apply to another school. I applied to Endicott, so I got to have a similar feeling, with the whole application process, but I guess I can’t really share their worries [about] picking a school and hearing back from them. ”
Occasionally Holcomb ese has questioned her decision to attend a small college.
“I definitely feel like that,” Holcomb
said. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘I should have just gone to a really big school and not [play] sports. But then, also, I like the school, I like the sport, so it definitely makes me happy that I have a decision, because I’m extremely indecisive, so I know that whole process would have driven me crazy.”
