By Kim J. Harmon

Kim Lowell is still young enough to remember what it was like to be on the field, clearing a ball out of the circle or challenging a charging forward.

The love of the game of field hockey is still a part of her and every day in the fall she tries to impart that to her charges on the Newtown High School junior varsity team. Only 29, she has been recognized this year as the  Assistant Coach of the Year by the Connecticut Field Hockey Coaches’ Association.

“It was pretty surprising,” said coach Lowell, who was recommended by head coach Kathy Davey. “This is the kind of thing you don’t even think about and then think someone who has been coaching for 20 years would get it.”

Lowell came to Newtown High School in 1999 after graduating from Colgate University, where she was sweeper for four seasons and helped lead the Red Raiders to a Patriot League championship in 1996. A physics teacher, she started her coaching career alongside coach Davey, though coach Lowell’s first assignment was with the freshman team.

The following year she took over the reigns of the junior varsity team and remained there for five years before stepping up to the varsity level for one year.

She returned to the jayvee bench this year.

“There is so much work and so many things to deal with as a head coach,” said coach Lowell, “but as a jayvee coach you just have to worry about the kids.”

The goal, said coach Lowell, is to prepare the players to play at the varsity level, helping them refine their skills and sharpen their knowledge of the things they would need to know to make the step up to the next level.

“And I want them to enjoy it,” she added.

A 1995 graduate of Haddam-Killingworth High School (the basis of the friendly non-conference rivalry that has built up between H-K and Newtown over the past several years), coach Lowell is happy with where she is right now.

“I love still being a part of the game,” she said, “but it’s hard to be on the sidelines and not playing.”