The Uxbridge (Mass.) field hockey team, by winning five straight Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association state tournaments, has shown the fruits of hard work, preparation and a decade-old feeder system started by Spartan alumna Kelly Rosborough, the team’s current head coach.
The Uxbridge dynasty is also a product of our times. The Spartans had to play a nine-game COVID-19 season just before the start of their 2021 championship series. Since that season, in an astonishing show of resilience, the Spartans have won 108 matches, drawn two and lost three.
Additionally, many home games are broadcast professionally, unlike most Uxbridge peers who plug in a robotic gimbal and stream it to the NHFS network. Everyone, including opposing coaching staffs, can gain insight into what has made the Spartans so good in recent years.
“We’re on Uxbridge Community Television,” says Rosborough, “and everyone knows where to find us.”
But did this hinder the team and the coaching staff? Not in the least.
“Part of our plan is, if they come out this way, what is our variant?” says Rosborough. “Everything we’ve built on, we need a variation, so if they were to study us, we would have it.”
For her efforts in building this hockey program to become the best in the country, Rosborough is the TopOfTheCircle.com USA Coach of the Year for 2025.
Uxbridge isn’t the most likely place you’d expect to see the best hockey team in the country. The town of 14,162 is located approximately halfway between Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, RI, approximately five miles from the border between the two New England states.
The city’s history dates back to 1662, but hockey can be traced back to the high school system that began in the mid-1940s for intramural competition and 1955 for interscholastic competition. Rosborough, in turn, played for Uxbridge in the mid-1990s and graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1996.
While at Storrs, she played for a UConn squad that made two Final Fours. She graduated and went into coaching, first at NEPSAC Class C side Worcester (Mass.) Academy, and then, starting in 2014, at Uxbridge.
One of the first things Rosborough did when taking over from Uxbridge was to start a youth hockey program. In the fall of 2021, a year after their ersatz-9-game COVID season, the pieces were in place for a history series.
“I could see that the trajectory of the program was going in the right direction,” says Rosborough. “We had started a youth program in town and the players there came to love the sport and played fall, winter and spring, so their focus changed.”
The 2021 team included three eighth-grade starters who would define the team’s success for the next five seasons: Amelia Blood, Julianna Casucci and Kendall Gilmore. They joined the rest of the post-COVID squad for the 2021 season and together won the first major hockey trophy in school history as the Spartans won the MIAA Division 4 title.
“It was just amazing; we won all our matches except two draws,” she says. “The team loved the postseason and the feeling of every postseason game. Traveling, they loved the support of the community. And the football team was so invested that they had a fan bus come to our state championship game. It added a very special touch to the experience.”
But the Spartans weren’t satisfied with one championship. They won the state Division 4 title for a second, third and fourth straight seasons. Uxbridge displayed a European style of play throughout, making use of space, letting the ball do the work and finishing with deadly effect. The players in the Uxbridge program were also cross-trained, so Rosborough could call on anyone on her bench for any role.
“I emphasized versatility,” she says. “They’ve played in midfield, they’ve played forward, they’ve played back. Apart from my goalkeepers, most of the team can play anywhere.”
Uxbridge was rightly celebrated for winning four consecutive titles against the smaller Division 4 schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But to their credit, Uxbridge’s athletic administration and coaching staff sought out competition from the slightly larger Division 3 schools.
“The conversation started after we won the second state championship (in 2022),” Rosborough said. “We didn’t know that the alignments happen every time two year. Although we wanted to make the change for the 2024 season, we were not in the alignment year, so we had to wait. It was something we wanted to do, so now that it’s happened, it’s now a two-year commitment.
Despite the burdensome rules and regulations that the MIAA has placed on their teams when it comes to scheduling, Uxbridge has managed to put together a Murderer’s Row team for the 2025 season. State championship winners such as East Greenwich (RI), Andover (Mass.), Somerset-Berkley (Mass.) Regional, Worcester Notre Dame Academy (Mass.) and Acton-Boxborough (Ms.) were on the schedule.
But there was one more match that Rosborough believed set the tone for the 2025 season, and she didn’t hesitate to identify the opponent.
“Walpole.”
When Rosborough was a player at Uxbridge, back when there were only two state champions, Walpole was the benchmark for teams in the MIAA Division 1 Central Region, while Uxbridge was in Division 2 Central. The Porkers won eight state championships under head coach Penny Calf and developed some great players and coaches at the next level.
“They were a division above us,” Rosborough said. “But they were legendary, and we knew who (all-time great) Tina McDavitt was.”
The two schools are only 20 miles apart, meaning the Oct. 3 race had more than enough build-up.
“Last year we went to them and we lost 2-1,” says Rosborough. “They were tied with us at the top of the power rankings, and Walpole looked like the team to beat.”
The Spartans were scheduled to score first when the teams met in 2025, but gave up a goal about two minutes later. But that would be the only goal Walpole would get all day. In a third quarter barrage for the ages, Casucci, Addie Blood and Brooklyn Kaferlein would put Uxbridge ahead 5-1 at three-quarter time en route to a 6-1 victory.
“We were fortunate to have more opportunities to build more of a lead, but that won’t always be the case, especially against teams like Walpole,” she said.
The following Tuesday, Uxbridge (Mass.) jumped to No. 1 in the TopOfTheCircle.com Top 10. It would stay there for the rest of the season.
A month later, the brackets for the MIAA Division 3 championship were released. Most readers’ eyes were focused directly on two teams: No. 1 seed Uxbridge and No. 5 seed Watertown. Watertown, the defending Division 3 champion, is a program that has shown astonishing success over the years, once boasting an NFHS record 184 games undefeated and two 100 match win streaks.
The teams met in a state semifinal Nov. 12 in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and Uxbridge wasted little time in asserting its authority. The match was 3-0 at halftime and 7-0 at full time. A few days later, Uxbridge would win its fifth straight state title with a 3-0 victory over Sandwich (Mass.).
The mastery displayed by Uxbridge during the 2025 season was truly remarkable. Of the 23 games played, the Spartans won all of them by at least three goals. In the state tournament, Uxbridge played five games and came away with five clean sheets while scoring 36 times. It was a dominant performance worthy of comparison to the great teams from Emmaus (Pa.), West Long Branch Shore Regional (NJ), Delmar (Del.), Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.), Voorhees Eastern (NJ), Kingston Wyoming Seminary (Pa.), or the last few years of Pottstown Hill School (Pa.).
The scary thing about what Rosborough has built is the fact that there is more to come. There are rising talents in rising seniors Addie Blood and Brooklyn Kaferlein and rising junior Ava Rosborough. Yes, the head coach’s daughter, who is participating in the U.S. Junior National Team program and is a candidate for selection to the U-16 National Team.
Expect more great things in the coming years.
Rosborough joins a group of celebrities who have won this award in the past:
2025: Kelly Rosborough, Uxbridge (Massachusetts)
2024: Leslie Fry, Chelsea (Mich.) and Jodi Hollamon, Delmar (Del.)
2023: Jeannette Ireland, Ellicott City Mount Hebron (Md.)
2022: Ann Simons, Longmeadow (Mass)
2021: Ruth Beaton, West Newbury Pentucket (Massachusetts)
2020-21: Carrie Holman, Vienna James Madison (Va.)
2019: Ali Good, Summit Oak Knoll (NJ)
2018: Bri Price, Hershey (Pa.)
2017: Mary Werkheiser, Norfolk (Va.) Academy
2016: Jessica Rose Shellenberger, Mount Joy Donegal (Pa.)
2015: Danyle Heilig, Voorhees Eastern (NJ)
2014: Eileen Donahue, Watertown (Mass)
2013: Jim Larkin, Chancellor of Fredericksburg (Va.)
2012: Ashly Fishell-Shaffer, Edgemere Sparrows Point (Md.)
2011: Lil Shelton, Severna Park (Md.)
2010: Sarah Catlin, Cincinnati St. Ursula (Ohio)
2009: Danyle Heilig, Voorhees Eastern (NJ)
2008: Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, Pewaukee Trinity Academy (Wisc.)
2007: Wendy Reichenbach, Palmyra (Pa.)
2006: Barb Dwyer, Ladue Horton Watkins (Mo.)
2005: Robin Woodie, Fredericksburg Stafford (Va.)
2004: Monica Dennis, Grosse Pointe South (Mich.)
2003: Kearney Francis, Silver Spring Springbrook (Md.)
2002: Slade Gormus, Midlothian James River (Va.)
2001: Amanda Janney, ft. Worth Trinity Valley (Tex.)
2000: Eileen Allan, Pompton Lakes (NJ)
1999: Amy Wood, Bethesda-Chevy Chase (Md.)
1998: Diane Chapman, Garden City (NY) and Brenda Beckwith, Winslow (Maine)
1997: Maryellen Clemencich, Allentown (NJ)
1996: Tracey Paul, Escondido San Pasqual (California)
1995: Nancy Fowlkes, Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.)
1994: Mike Shern, Lacey (NJ) Township
1993: Pat Toner, Newtown Council Rock (Pa.)
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