New Jersey’s Austyn Cuneo breaks career goals record as a junior

A new record stands for field hockey career goals, set by Austyn Cuneo.

Cuneo, a junior at Voorhees (New Jersey) Eastern High School, surpassed the record of 191 on October 23 with her second of three goals in the Vikings 11-0 win over Cherry Hill (New Jersey) East High School.

The previous record was set by Florence (New Jersey) High School’s Lexi Smith in 2012.

According to an article on ESPNW, the record was broken seven minutes into the game. Cuneo’s coach, Danyle Heilig, took a time out in order to honor her.

Her moment included balloons in the shape of the numbers 1, 9 and 2 along with tears of happiness.

“I was fine until I saw Coach Heilig shed a tear,” said Cuneo to ESPNW. “I saw how proud she was, and my mom cried, too. I just saw how everyone was so happy and I couldn’t help but get emotional, too.”

ESPNW reported that Cuneo tied a state record of 69 goals when she was a freshman. In her sophomore season, she had 68. At the time of the article she had 56 goals this season, but according to ESPNW if she kept up her average of 3.5-goals-per-game, she would break her own New Jersey single-season record before the playoffs began.

Cuneo committed to the University of North Carolina during her sophomore year.

“I’ve coached kids who went on to the Olympics or become college All-Americans,” said Coach Heilig to ESPNW. “Austyn is one of the top five or 10 players I’ve coached. There is no doubt in my mind she will have great success at the next level. North Carolina has one of the top programs in the nation, and they were pursuing her aggressively at an early age. There’s a reason for that.”

Cuneo and the Vikings are now in the middle of the playoffs, giving her an opportunity to take the record to a place where she will have few challengers. She has all of her senior season, too.

“It was awesome,” Cuneo said about breaking the record to ESPNW. “I felt a mix of enjoyment, relief, joy and everything you can think of.”