About us

Thanks for visiting the Portland FH (HOCKEYPALOOZA) website! The goal of this site is to pull together ALL field hockey lovers in Maine! If you have anything you'd like to share, please get in touch! :)

suzanne.d.parks@hotmail.com

This website is meant to be a lifelong favorite for FH players in the Portland, ME area:

youth & HS players can register for camp;

plan a team clinic or camp;

HS players can find Gordon's Portland summer league schedule;

college players home for the summer can join weekly play;

college players can get ready for their season at boot camp;

women can join year-round play;

college players & women can find out about tournaments;

coaches & officials can get started here;

you can keep up with local FH news....

This website could not have been imagined when Suz first began organizing FH for women in the Portland area. She is thrilled that the level of interest now supports so many FH opportunities for those who are past the traditional years of competitive play.

A very big & well-deserved THANKS to Brett & Brittany Saucier for making this website a reality!! See you on the field!!

Suz (Parks) Bourgault accidentally "found" & fell in love with the sport of field hockey in the fall of her junior year in HS. With some encouragement from her Brewer HS coach, she decided to walk-on to the Division II Bentley FH team. After graduating from college, she thought playing FH was a thing of her past. When she was 23, she was introduced to an "over 30" group that played at Greely HS. There, she met Melissa Emery, who invited her to play in a true FH league (NEFHL) in Massachusetts. Since Fall 1998, Suz has driven to MA on Sunday mornings in the fall to play. In 2004, a friend suggested Suz organize FH in Portland. Gathering names, finding fields, and actually getting people to show up turned out to be a pretty big feat. After a couple of (very long) years of showing up, only to find that there weren't enough people to play a game, a regular group emerged. Back then, it was a great day when 10 players showed up!!

By 2006, there were quite a few women who were playing consistently, and the first year of a FH tournament as a part of the Summer ME Games came to be. Today, the ME Games FH Tournament is something that players look forward to year round. In addition to that one, Suz began hosting 7v7 tournaments in Fall 2007, modeled after the ME Games. Those annual events finally got a name from a participant contest in Spring 2009. HOCKEYPALOOZA is now an annual Spring & Fall tournament, pulling together 50-100 players each time. Additionally, there is weekly play (Tues) available through the entire indoor season. In the summer, Suz organizes 1 night (Sundays), as she has found that summer in ME is a tough time of year for people to commit. The great news is that there are now so many people playing that there is a great game every week, and 5v5 (while still ok) is now considered a disappointing number. The fall season was the only time she didn't have time to organize weekly play, as she was coaching or officiating 6 days per week. BUT after taking a step back from those arenas, she now also organizes a weekly game in the Fall as well!