An incredible moment helps Michigan’s Abby Tamer achieve her Olympic dream
Ann Arbor — The U.S. women’s field hockey team, which has excelled under new coach David Passmore, was not even supposed to be there, but three consecutive wins without conceding a goal earned the team a place in the semifinals of the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers in India earlier this year.
It was the Americans’ fourth game in six days in the eight-team tournament, and a win over Japan would allow the U.S. team to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
Abby Tamer, a Whitmore Lake native and Michigan field hockey standout who took a year off from the Olympics to compete with the U.S. team, felt she was the least likely to make a difference on the young team.
After Japan took a 1-0 lead with a goal in the third quarter, U.S. captain Ashley Hoffman tied the game in the fourth. Tamer then scored the winning goal on a rebound from a corner kick to send the Americans to the Olympics. One day after the opening ceremony, the Americans will face world No. 2 Argentina on July 27.
“We called the same play we had just scored on. I lined up and thought, ‘Great, our captain is going to score. This is going to be great. We’re going to take the lead,'” Tamer said in an interview with The Detroit News. “Then the goalie saved a ball. I remember standing there thinking, ‘She’s going to rebound the ball back to me.’ I can just tell by the position of the ball and her stick, and then she hit it right at me. When I realized it was coming to me before she even did that, I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to get it, I’m going to hit it and hopefully it goes in.’ And that’s exactly what happened.
“I looked at the referee and she gave me the signal for the goal because I honestly didn’t see the ball go in. I just remember hitting it, hearing the people cheering and realising, wow, I was actually part of that. It was pretty surreal. And then the end of the game, our team celebration and everyone processing the fact that we had qualified even though we had no business ranking-wise being in that game and coming out as winners of that competition. But we knew that all our work was paying off and that we deserved to be there. So to actually see that was pretty surreal.”
It shouldn’t have been a big surprise that Tamer was able to score the game-winning goal. She had already scored the goal earlier in the qualifying tournament in a 1-0 win over India. And last November, she tied with the team captain with four goals to help the U.S. win a silver medal at the 2023 Pan American Games in Chile. The U.S. women’s field hockey team last qualified for the Olympics at the 2016 Games in Rio. Tamer had been playing field hockey for a year at that point.
Tamer, who turned 21 in early July, learned in June that she had officially been named to the U.S. Olympic roster. She is the youngest in an athletic, competitive family. Her father, Chris, played hockey for Michigan (1989-93) and spent 11 years in the NHL with the Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers and Atlanta Thrashers. Her mother, Keely (Libby), was a star player on Michigan’s field hockey team (1989-93) and twice captain. Tamer has two older siblings, Emma and Christopher, and Emma was also a member of Michigan’s field hockey team (2018-21).
Tamer’s parents never pushed her and her siblings to play sports, she says. In fact, Tamer didn’t like field hockey right away when she started playing the sport in seventh grade.
“Field hockey is a really challenging sport because it’s so technical that you have to get over the hurdle of, ‘Can I dribble the ball yet? Can I pass the ball?'” Tamer said. “Until you get over that hurdle, it’s a difficult sport to get into. I wanted to quit pretty early, but my parents always insisted that if you commit to something, you have to follow through with it, no matter what it was. So it wasn’t field hockey that pushed me to keep going. Thankfully they did, because probably two weeks later I was like, ‘Wow, I want to play in college. This is awesome.'”
Despite her family’s close ties to Michigan, there was no pressure for Tamer, a Dexter High School graduate, to follow suit and attend Ann Arbor, choosing Northwestern, Maryland and Michigan as her college choice.
“I think I was open-minded, but overall, Michigan’s atmosphere, the sports and the academics were the absolute highlight for me,” Tamer said. “And I’m a bit of a homebody, so it’s nice to be close to home.”
Tamer decided to take a year off from Michigan last year as she was an Olympic redshirt and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to train with the U.S. team. During her freshman season at Michigan in 2021, she played in 19 games and started nine times as a forward. The following year, she appeared in all 20 games and started 19 times. Tamer, who is studying applied exercise science and has two years of eligibility remaining, did not take classes last fall but took online courses over the winter.
Although it was a difficult decision to pause her time with the Michigan team, Tamer said she was confident it was the right one to pursue her goals.
“It was really challenging at the time, especially because I was fairly new to the team,” she said. “I felt a bit like an imposter, like I didn’t belong there, and I had to process that a bit. I had a lot of support no matter where I was in my decision-making process, but once I made the decision, I was all in and haven’t looked back since.”
Tamer’s parents and siblings, as well as other family and friends, will attend the Olympics to support her. Tamer said she relied on her mother — essentially her coach growing up, who drove her to and from practice and discussed the intricacies of field hockey — for her expertise. And she has benefited from her father’s experience as a professional athlete to know how to handle the increased attention and pressure that comes with being in the spotlight.
“They were definitely super helpful,” Tamer said. “They gave me the tools throughout my childhood to be able to do this on my own, but I have these two great resources and I’m going to use them.”
Tamer said her game has improved in many ways during her time away from Michigan.
“I notice it most clearly in my decision-making,” she said. “International field hockey is so much faster than college field hockey. People always say it’s so much faster and you have to get used to the jump, but I didn’t expect this level. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’ve definitely made a lot of progress since I started last June.”
This bodes well for Michigan field hockey. But for Tamer, the most important thing is the Olympics.
@chengelis
How the Gaza war influenced the British elections
Starz reveals first look at Outlander Season 7 Part 2, prequel series
ZW Data Action Technologies (NASDAQ:CNET) now listed on StockNews.com
About The Author
