For Archbishop Spalding sophomores Jilly Lawn and Stella Bumgarner, playing field hockey seemed inevitable.

Jilly’s older sisters Margot and Becca Lawn played and Stella’s sister Shelby Bumgarner played. Their mothers Teri Lawn and Jenny Bumgarner also played and they coached at Lake Shore Field Hockey in Pasadena where all of the girls got their start.

By the time Jilly and Stella were tots, they had already watched a lot of field hockey games and no one ever had to coax them to play.

“I feel like it was a given in my family,” said Jilly, whose grandmother Mary Lou Gorzynski played on the US national field hockey team. “Of course, I could have played soccer and other sports, but seeing my older sisters play really inspired me to be like them when I was younger. It was just a fun thing that I could learn to do because I knew I had people close to me who loved it too.”

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Almost from the time they could walk, Jilly and Stella liked tinkering with a stick and ball.

They started playing organized field hockey with the Pink Chihuahuas at Lake Shore when they were 5 years old — a year earlier than most other girls.

By then, the families were already connected. Becca and Shelby were close friends, playing on the same Lake Shore team with Jenny Bumgarner assisting her sister-in-law Cindy Grant as coach. Teri Lawn coached Margot’s team and later Jilly and Stella’s team at Lake Shore.

Stella Bumgarner and Jilly Lawn (center L to R) grew up playing field hockey together and their sisters Shelby Bumgarner (left) and Becca Lawn were also close friends playing in the Lake Shore program in Pasadena. All four went on to play at Archbishop Spalding, where Stella and Jilly are sophomore leaders on defense for the No. 1 Cavaliers. (Photo courtesy of Jenny Bumgarner)

Going to their sisters’ games, Jilly and Stella were usually more interested in playing than watching. Both girls remember hitting around after the games when they were about 3. Sometimes they played off to the side, having seen enough of their sisters in action.

”We always wanted to do what they did,” Stella said. “I liked the environment. It was fun and when we started playing, we were both pretty good for our age.”

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That wasn’t much of a surprise considering how much hockey they saw.

”They got dragged along to a lot of field hockey games and you can pick up a lot just from being there,” said Teri Lawn, who played at Towson State University. “They would just fiddle on their own on the side and really enjoyed playing with each other. Just being around the game, they absorbed a lot on their own and when the time came to play, they were more natural.

”As high school players, Jilly and Stella are more than pretty good for their age. Last season, they started for Spalding and helped the No. 1 Cavaliers win their first Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland championship since 2015, when Margot was a freshman.

Becca played defense for the Cavaliers last year and was impressed by how easily the two freshmen blended into the team.

”They were freshmen school-wise but not on the field,” Becca said. “Their knowledge of the game was a lot higher than the average freshmen. On the field, they were comfortable. It was just easy. I knew if I gave them the ball, something good would happen and if not, they worked super hard to make up for it.”

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After contributing to a championship season last fall, Jilly and Stella aim to make it two in a row, but now they’re the leaders on defense with Stella in the back and Jilly in the key defensive midfield role.

”They are the heart of the defense,” Spalding coach Leslee Brady said, “because they were both back there last year and they have that year of experience and they’ve been playing together forever. They just have this synergy. They feed off each other.”

The Cavaliers, who are still No. 1, shutout their first two opponents by a combined score of 11-0. Now, they’re preparing for a much tougher contest in Saturday’s showdown at No. 2 Broadneck at 1:30 p.m. in the Broadneck Tournament.

”The thing I love about both JIlly and Stella is they’re young players, but they have a lot of poise,” Brady said. “There’s no panic in them whatsoever even when the game gets frenzied and the stands go wild, they’re just very poised.”

Both girls said it was easy to settle into starting roles last year as the team chemistry developed, because they were never treated like freshmen. Now, they’re both comfortable speaking up and leading their teammates.

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Jilly moved around the field a little bit last season, but Stella remained on defense, a position she had only played for about a year. It helped, she said, that Shelby was a defender.

“Shelby was able to teach me a lot about defense,” Stella said. “I would come to her for help and it was an easy way to learn more. I found that I really enjoy defense. For a while, I was a goal scorer and now I’m such a defender.”

Both want to play field hockey in college like their sisters. Margot is a senior at Maryland, Shelby is a sophomore at Duke and Becca, a freshman at Miami Ohio. Jilly and Stella spent the summer playing with their club field hockey teams and preparing for the recruiting process.

Stella Bumgarner (left) and Jilly Lawn enjoyed their first field hockey camp together. They started playing at 5. "They were the cutest little best friends," said Jilly's sister Becca, who played with Stella's sister Shelby. "They weren't like mini-us, but it was cool to see the sport passed down to them." (Photo courtesy of Jenny Bumgarner)

As they moved through recreation and club field hockey, Jilly and Stella couldn’t help but feel a little in their sisters’ shadows. Now that they’re the only ones left in their clubs and at Spalding, they feel they’re moving away from those comparisons. They didn’t mind them too much, but each likes being known for being her own person.

Margot set the bar high for her sisters, earning MAX Field Hockey All-America honors at Spalding and going on to play for the USA Field Hockey U17, U19 and U21 national teams as well as the USA Women’s Junior National Indoor Team.

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Jill’s aspirations don’t reach quite that far.

”I’m super proud of her,” Jilly said. “I can’t believe how far she actually went, because I see all the work she does behind that, all the extra training and everything that she did, but at the same time I don’t want that for myself … just because, growing up, Margot went to a lot of stuff and she missed out on social events. I want to save more time to be with my friends and family rather than going to the national level.”

While Jilly and Stella work hard at field hockey, they like doing other things as well. They both play lacrosse and they both enjoy crafts, so they want a more diverse college experience. They’re looking for a college program with the same kind of family environment they enjoy at Spalding.

“Spalding is the best place for field hockey, at least I think so,” Stella said. “It’s not only that we were good and we won last year, but all the people are kind. My sister talked a lot about that and she found it. At Duke, she noticed that the environment was getting similar to how it is at Spalding and she loves that.”

Jilly said having such a close team breeds success.

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”Our team wouldn’t have been as successful as it was last year if it wasn’t for how we bonded together,” she said. “It really is a family.”

For Jilly and Stella, in more ways than one.