After scoring her first collegiate goal Saturday against Indiana, Maryland field hockey forward Olivia Reiter pumped her right fist and turned around to greet her teammates.
Without slowing down, she hopped into the air as she gave an emphatic high-five to forward Linnea Gonzales. The force of the high-five nearly stopped Gonzales in her tracks, which was helpful as Gonzales had to quickly reverse course to catch up with Reiter.
“I was pumped,” Reiter said.
It was a celebration for a goal that Reiter had waited for since arriving in College Park in January 2015. After she won a pair of state championships at Severna Park, Reiter graduated early and enrolled at Maryland for the spring semester and has worked to earn playing time with the Terps this year.
“It was pretty scary, I was the only one that came in early,” Reiter said. “I didn’t have any other new people that were confused … but I quickly figured it out.”
When coach Missy Meharg had pitched the idea of Reiter joining the team for a grayshirt semester, Reiter liked the idea.
“I was pretty over high school,” she said. “It wasn’t too complicated, so I went for it … I thought it would be a cool experience to get ahead and not be as nervous on my first day of preseason freshman year.”
Despite the head start, Reiter didn’t see the field much last year. She played in 11 of the team’s 23 games and accumulated three shots.
Still, she said her first season was “an awesome experience,” and impressed her team with her work ethic and attitude.
“She’ll just run through a wall for her teammates,” Meharg said. “That’s what she does for us.”
The start of Reiter’s sophomore year has been a stark contrast to her first season.
She’s appeared in each of the Terps’ first seven games and started in five of them. She’s already taken more shots than she did as a rookie, and Saturday against Indiana she scored her first college goal.
This season also has included a position change for Reiter. Listed as a midfielder to start the year, Meharg made the switch to forward official before Saturday’s game, when she asked that Reiter be announced as a forward during the starting lineups.
“It’s pretty funny, I’ve played like every position,” Reiter said. “I started as a defender, then [Meharg] moved me to midfield, and then this fall she moved me to forward. She basically told me ‘I want you to score.'”
After finding the back of the net against Indiana, the No. 7 Terps hope the Severna Park native can continue her contributions in Tuesday’s matchup at No. 10 Princeton.
“She’s very strong and she’ll keep running and she’ll counter-defend, and she’s also really a team player,” Meharg said. “When people talk to [Reiter], she wants to do what the people behind her want.”
Midfielder Lein Holsboer has also noticed that Reiter feeds off input from her team.
“She really likes to be talked to,” Holsboer said. “We give her a lot of encouragement from the backline.”
Reiter said the reason she listens to her team is simply because “that’s what being a good teammate is.” It’s one of the many little things she does that has helped her find her niche as a sophomore.
Meharg, who’s in her 29th year coaching the Terps, called her “one of the most hard-working young women [she’s] ever worked with.” Holsboer said she’s the “most hard-working person on the team.”
So though it may have taken some time for Reiter to produce the on-field results, they’re not surprised that she’s breaking out in her sophomore campaign.
“It’s not always the most technically talented and savvy, it’s the people that believe in the people behind them and have the energy to have the fitness to drive to win,” Meharg said. “I’m so happy that she got on the board.”
