There are two brief conversations Pam Arpe remembers distinctly. Those two help explain why the Stonehill field hockey team has never been better.

With the help of Goffstown High products Caitlin Gleason and Kerri Sullivan, Stonehill has enjoyed its greatest twoyear stretch in program history.

Since last fall, it’s claimed two Northeast- 10 conference crowns, posted 36 wins to just eight losses and advanced to the NCAA Division II tournament twice, the first times in school history.

Gleason and Sullivan, meanwhile, have been at the center of it all.

Stonehill’s all-time leading scorer and still a junior, Gleason, a New Boston resident, was named a National Field Hockey Coaches Association first-team All-American this season after continuing to obliterate the Skyhawks’ record books.

Sullivan, a do-everything sophomore for Arpe and a Goffstown native, validated her Northeast-10 Rookie of the Year award from last year by finishing tied for third on the team with 21 points this year.

Yet, as much as Arpe, the team’s seventh-year coach, expected the pair to be impact players when she recruited them, their words have had as much impact as their actions.

As a freshman two years ago, Gleason was expected to contribute, but when the team’s then-senior captain and star forward went down with a season-ending ACL injury, Arpe turned to Gleason and told her, “Caitlin, it’s now up to you. Are you up to it?”

“And she looked me straight in the eye – here she is 18 years old,” Arpe said, “and she said, ‘I will do this.’” She certainly has, setting program records for career game-winners with 12, points in a season with 39 and points in a game with 10, which she did on Oct. 6 on four goals and two assists – earning her a nod in the Oct. 2 issue of Sports Illustrated in “Faces in the Crowd.”

A year after her defining conversation with Gleason, Arpe couldn’t find a definite place for her second Grizzlies recruit, moving Sullivan from the back line to the front line to the midfield and back again. She utilized Sullivan’s versatility at different positions again this year – where she scored her seven goals on only 14 shots – but Arpe knew Sullivan was up for it.

Arpe had told her she didn’t know where to put her, “but you’re going to be out there somewhere.” Sullivan simply replied, “I just want to play.” “I think that everybody has an ideal position that they want to play,” Sullivan said. “But our whole lineup changed basically every game, so I think wherever they needed it, that was the best place for me at the time and they kind of trusted me to do that.”

As much as Stonehill’s success says about Arpe’s ability to recruit high-impact players, Sullivan and Gleason’s ability to contribute – and at times dominate – at the college level also speaks volumes about Goffstown’s program.

A perennial Class L contender in recent years, the Grizzlies have produced a number of college players – last season, Kaye Kenney, at UMass-Lowell, and Kaitlin Koffink, at St. Michael’s College, both earned spots on Division II rosters, while Katie Naughton suits up for Division I power Iowa.

Arpe said she hopes to add another Goffstown product next year in senior Lauren Gifford, who Stonehill is recruiting.

“Never mind with two players, but now more than likely, we’ll have three from the same high school. You never, ever see that in college,” Gleason said. “I think it says a lot for Goffstown, in general too, that it keeps producing good athletes who are going to good schools.”