Concord’s Armaganian named to US Indoor Field Hockey team

Maria Armaganian had a unique gift for Father’s Day this year.

It wasn’t necessarily something that her father, Mark, wanted, but when she asked him to go with her to Spring City, Pa., he was more than happy go.

That’s where Armaganian, a senior midfielder for the Northeastern University field hockey team, was set to have a tryout for the U.S. Women’s National Indoor Team.

“He was more than happy to go,” Armaganian said. “My mom (Nicole) is the field hockey guru, and whenever I went to a tryout as a kid, she came with me. He was enjoying it more than most people would. He was happy.”

That feeling continued on after the tryout, when Armaganian found out she had made the team and would be playing for the US when it travels to Austria in December and Croatia in February for the Indoor World Cup.

For Armaganian, who was a three-sport athlete at Concord High School before graduating in 2021, it’ll be the first time she’s traveled outside of the United States since she was in high school.

“Junior year I went on a trip with my club team to England,” Armaganian said. “Other than that, I’ve not been anywhere else outside of the states. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

It’s also been an commitment that required her to stay on top of her indoor field hockey game, something she admits she hadn’t done all that often since high school. Most weekends between the tryout and the start of Northeastern’s preseason in early August were spent going back and forth to Pennsylvania to work with the national team.

“It’s a very different game,” Armaganian said of indoor field hockey. “It’s a different stick, different rules, the surface is different. But the skills you develop in indoor apply to outdoor field hockey. It involves a lot more thinking than outdoor does.”

There are also boards around the playing surface, and Armaganian sees her time playing ice hockey for the Crimson Tide as allowing her an advantage.

“You can use them to get angles to get the ball to a teammate,” she said. “I feel as though I’ve been able to excel in that part.”

Armaganian has also done that for the Huskies as she begins her third year as a starter at midfield. Northeastern is off to a 1-1 start to the season, having lost to No. 17 Boston College, 3-1, before beating Quinnipiac, 3-2. The team is on the West Coast for a three-game stretch, starting at 7 p.m. Thursday night against Cal.

While her collegiate career on the field wraps up this fall, Armaganian knows she’ll still be playing indoor beyond that. And with another year of school to go after this one – Armaganian is majoring in industrial engineering with a minor in graphic design – there will be an opportunity to continue perfecting those skills while at Northeastern.

“Northeastern has a sport court on campus, and from January to about early March, we’re in there,” she said. “The coach here offered to let me continue to play.

“We have (indoor) games starting as early as December. It’s definitely a lot to balance, but it’s a good fit for me. I like high-intensity and packed schedules.”