Saving the best: Meet VCU field hockey star goalie Emma Clements

By Sian Wilkerson

As a sophomore in high school, Emma Clements faced an important decision. The star goaltender on the Fredericksburg Academy field hockey team wanted to pursue her sport at the Division I level. She wanted to study biomedical engineering. And she wanted to stick close to home.

"I made a long list," Clements said, "and I emailed every school" that checked off each box.

In the end, Virginia Commonwealth University stood above the rest. Now a third-year biomedical engineering major in the College of Engineering and a redshirt sophomore on the VCU field hockey team, Clements couldn't be happier with her choice. And the Rams couldn't be happier to have her.

Midway through the season, Clements has backstopped her team to an 11-3 start that puts VCU atop the Atlantic 10 Conference standings. The starting goaltender has racked up seven shutouts with an .833 save percentage and a .977 goals-against average - all of which are among the top 10 marks in the nation - and Clements already has notched two A-10 defensive player of the week honors as well as a defensive player of the week nod from the National Field Hockey Coaches Association.

Impressive as her personal stats are, her focus is on the team.

"We want to win an A-10 championship," Clements said. "I'm thinking about how I can help benefit my team to reach that goal - and through trying to achieve that goal, the stats come along with it. If I just let the least number of goals in, that's how we can achieve it."

Clements' field hockey journey began in the sixth grade, when she began attending a new school and was invited by classmates to join the team. When the starting goalie was injured midway through the season, Clements, who as a 5-year-old played goalie in soccer, was called on to fill the spot. Somehow, she laughed, she was the most qualified.

She soon was playing year-round through school and club athletics, winning a VISAA Division II state title as a high school junior in 2021. The championship game, a thriller against Cape Henry Collegiate, went into a shootout after regulation and the first overtime period ended with a score of 2-2.

Against a state powerhouse, Fredericksburg Academy was the underdog. But by the time they made it to the shootout, Clements had all the confidence in the world.

"All I had to do was keep the ball out of the back of the net," she said - and she did, giving her team the upset victory.

Clements noted that her mindset in the classroom is fundamentally different than her mindset as a goalie. In her biomedical engineering major, she calls herself "analytical." But on the field, she said, "you cannot overthink - if a goal goes in, you have to have the memory of a goldfish: six seconds of thinking about it and then it's gone."

That philosophy has helped propel the Rams as they set their sights on an A-10 title - and it's propelling her on a career path. Clements is pursuing rehabilitation engineering, which she chose following an internship at a prosthetics clinic in high school. She had shadowed a clinician, seeing patients and getting experience putting together prosthetics. Her goal is to help people, many of them veterans, facing limb loss.

"Just to be able to give back to them is very heartwarming," Clements said, noting that biomedical engineering has become an even bigger passion than her sport.

"I love field hockey - but I don't know if I love it to the point where I'd have to stop being a biomedical engineer," she said. "I'll do that for the rest of my life, [while] hockey's only temporary. So, I'm soaking up every ounce I have here so that I can pursue my career after."

As her third season with the Rams continues, her embrace of opportunity - on and off the field - is the wisdom she shares with others.

"Just do things that make you happy," Clements said. "We get so focused on what we think we should do, what we think other people want us to do - but in the end, you live your own life. Do what makes you happy."