SOUTH HADLEY — When Katie Hopp and her fellow volunteer organizers started the Western Mass. Summer Field Hockey League in 2019, the league contained seven schools and about 70 players.

Five years and six seasons later, they’re at 243 players from 18 different schools. 

The league’s season ended on Wednesday with its annual end-of-summer tournament, won by East Longmeadow for the second straight summer. The Frontier/Mohawk Trail co-op team advanced to the loser’s bracket semifinal of the double elimination bracket, getting past Greenfield in penalty strokes along the way.

Teams are self-run by the players, and they compete twice a week across seven summer weeks. Enrollment costs $75 and all games are staffed with trainers and certified officials. Local field hockey clubs can be expensive or far away, but the league is centrally located at South Hadley High School.

“We volunteer, we don’t make a penny off it,” Hopp said. “We just want these kids to grow and have fun.”

This year, the league added numbers to the back of pinnies and coaches from American International College, Elms College, the University of Hartford and Springfield College were in attendance to scout potential recruits. The league is also a tool for younger players who want to improve their games for the upcoming fall, Frontier goalie Kyra Richards said.

“We have a lot of younger kids that have joined,” Richards said. “So, kids that have joined and are reaching for varsity this year, like middle schoolers or anyone that wasn’t pulled up to varsity in the past season, a lot of people will come to this so they have that extra edge on everybody else to get ready.”

Richards has been playing in the league for five seasons and has seen it grow in size each year. It even survived the summer of 2020, when parents sat in their cars in the South Hadley parking lot and watched the action from afar.

And since nearly every field hockey program in western Mass. participates, the league serves as a tool to scout future opponents. Richards estimated that about 70% of her team participated in the league this year and said most players in the area participate.

That advance scouting will come to use soon. The start of preseason is just a few days away.

“It’s fun to be able to warm up with my team before the normal season, have a bit of a preseason get-together and make sure we’re ready for the actual season,” Richards said. “Along with captains’ practices, we do this, and then by the time tryouts hit we’re not all rusty and not ready.”