There’s a famous story about when the 1962 Mets, the first team in the franchise’s history, reported for Spring Training. Manager Casey Stengel assembled his players, held up a baseball and started to explain how it’s used in the game. Stengel was much like Millie Birosik Nemeth, who gave her field hockey players a ball and a stick in 1963 and started explaining how the game worked. After all, it was the first season that Parkland had a field hockey team and Nemeth was its coach.

“None of us really knew much about the game,” said Deb (Schrader) Fronheiser, who was one of eight former players who gathered recently to celebrate the 1966 team that went undefeated. “They said here’s a stick and here’s a ball.”

The ‘66 team finished the season 8-0, but never really got much publicity. There was a team photo in the local paper, but there was never really much of a celebration for the team just four years into past its origin that started beating powerhouse teams of the day as part of its perfect season.

“Our biggest memory was beating Southern Lehigh for the first time, and Emmaus,” said Linda (Kromer) Wotring, who was a captain of the team. “They were the powerhouses back then and they’re still the powerhouses today, so that was the biggest thing. We were undefeated and beat Emmaus 4-0 and beat Southern Lehigh 5-0.”

Wotring’s granddaughter, Grace Royer is a senior on the current Parkland team.

Nemeth, who passed away in 2012, coached the team from its inception through the 1979 season and is a member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. She also coached the girls basketball team for seven seasons during the same time that field hockey was just getting started.

“Millie was extremely good with the girls and her standards were always set high,” said team member Linda (Dalrymple) Roth.

Even though she was somewhat of a task-master, Nemeth was remembered fondly by all of the players who were at Parkland’s newly renovated field last week to recognize the undefeated team. Wotring compared her to Ginny Huber, who coached Emmaus back then and to Emmaus current coach Sue Butz-Stavin, the only two coaches for Emmaus field hockey since their program started in 1955.

“You look at all of the teams that do well and they have coaches that have been there for years, just like Millie was there for years after we left,” said Wotring, who spent 28 years as a high school field hockey official. “Easton had a coach – a husband and wife – who were there for years and they were dominant for a while. Emmaus had Ginny Huber when we were playing and now they have Sue Butz-Stavin and that’s what it takes to develop a program.”

“Each year we won more games and got better and better and that was because of Millie,” said another member of the ‘66 team, Mary Troxell.

The team started with a 2-4 record that first year before progressing to three wins, four wins and then the undefeated season in 1966. The following season, Parkland went 5-0-3 under Nemeth.

“It was a big accomplishment in just four years to go from just learning to being undefeated,” said Fronheiser, who coached field hockey for 21 seasons at both Northern Lehigh and Palmerton. Her granddaughter, Paige Frantz, now plays for Palmerton.

As best as the players could remember, the starting team for Parkland was unscored upon in 1966, but Marlene Simock remembers that the team did give up two goals, but both goals came in lopsided wins where Nemeth had inserted backup players to finish out games. They all agreed that the defense was the standout part of the team with a strong backfield that didn’t allow many shots at goalie Diana (Lichtenwalner) Haines.

“Our defense was great,” said Haines. “I just would pray and say ‘don’t come back here with the ball.’”

The reunion for the 50th Anniversary of the undefeated season gave players a chance to bring each other up to date on their lives, reminisce about what times were like back then, and how the game has changed.

“It’s great to get to see everybody, because we don’t all get to see each other outside of a reunion or something,” said Simock. “Plus, we didn’t get a lot of recognition back then, so this is really nice.”