Submitted by Mariellen Cherry, Asst. Coach HKHS Field Hockey
(September 12, 2022) —A Haddam-Killingworth High School graduate, and an East Haddam teacher are now members of the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame. At an induction ceremony held at the Aqua Turf Club in Plainville on September 11, 2022, Ashley Smith of Killingworth, and Kelly Braza, a Social Studies teacher at Nathan Hale-Ray Middle School, were honored for their achievements in the sport.
Smith, a Registered Nurse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, was a student-athlete at HKHS and captained all three teams of which she was a member: field hockey, basketball and lacrosse She graduated in 2006 and continued her field hockey career at UMass-Lowell, where she was named to the NCAA Championship All-Tournament Team in her senior year. Smith is currently pursuing an MS degree in Advanced Practice Nursing at Quinnipiac University.
Braza has served as a high school field hockey official for more than twenty years. She is a graduate of Southern Connecticut State University, with a BA in History and a BS in Elementary Education. She earned her Master’s in Education Technology at Leslie University, and is a 6th Grade teacher Hale-Ray Middle School. Teaching first brought Braza to field hockey officiating. She has been Vice President of the Connecticut Field Hockey Officials Board, and has also been a lacrosse official for eighteen years.
