They made it through intense tryouts and a three-day selection camp in Lancaster in January. Now three members from the state championship field hockey team from Wyoming Seminary are ready to represent the US on the women's US17 and 19 national teams. Juniors Alex Wesneski and Hannah Maxwell from Forty Fort made the top 36 cut for U17, while senior Kesley Reznick from Drums is part of the U19 squad.
"It's definitely completely different from high-school field hockey. You play with the top 36 girls in the country and that's one of the best experiences because the game is ten times faster," said Alex Wesneski.
"Definitely I feel really honored to represent our country and coming off that state championship had a lot of motivation going into tryouts. So I had a lot of motivation from last year not even making the second cut," said Hannah Maxwell.
"So I just started playing defense last year for the U17 national team, so that's kind of where I started playing defense and we made that switch half way through the season this year and I love it back there. It's probably one of my favorite positions," said Kelsey Reznick.
After this spring and summer run for these girls on these separate national teams Kelsey will head to Duke in the fall while Alex and Hannah have one more year of school here at Wyoming Seminary. Both of those girls are already committed-ale will head to Iowa in a couple of years and Hannah to Wake Forest.
"So I have four-years of college coming up ahead of me, which is going to be even more intense than it is now with high-school and even on the national teams getting to play on that collegiate level especially at Duke," again said Kelsey.
In April both teams travel to Germany where they will play the German and Belgium national teams. They are looking forward to the experience and the challenges it brings.
"I'm definitely looking forward to traveling with everyone and just kind of making friendships with the girl's. Every time we have training we always talk about that this is a once in a lifetime thing," again said Hannah.
"In a couple of weeks we are leaving to go to Duke, so that is going to be good and just be back with the girl's on the team and obviously playing with one of my teammates is really nice to have," again said Alex.
We had local players representing team USA at the Olympics in Rio in 2016. The next wave will be in Tokyo in 2020. Steve Lloyd reporting for Newswatch 16 sports from Luzerne County.