Captured Sound: The Songs That Power USA's Masters Athletes

Every athlete has that one song. The one you cranked on your Walkman before a tournament. The one that played on the team boombox while you taped up your sticks. The one everyone on the bus sang at the top of their lungs on the way to states. The one that, no matter how much time has passed, every time you hear it, you feel 18 again, ready to get out on the field and compete.

This summer, 270 athletes will board flights to the Netherlands and Belgium. They'll pack their sticks, turf shoes, and a whole lot of KT Tape; leave behind families, jobs, and the routines that hold their daily lives together. They’ll sit down for the long flight, put on their headphones, and get mentally ready to don their red, white, and blue jerseys. These are USA’s Masters athletes, and they are ready to compete at the 2026 World Masters Hockey (WMH) World Cup.

The WMH World Cup will take place July 22 to August 16 across four cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. There is a record-breaking global participation, with over 400 teams from across the world registered to compete. USA will have 15 teams competing.

When asked to share the songs that powered them through their younger playing days, the Masters athletes answered with a soundtrack that spans six decades of music and four decades of field hockey. The result is a 60-song playlist curated entirely by USA Masters athletes. From Diana Ross to Beyoncé, Motown to EDM, grass fields to AstroTurf, and boomboxes to AirPods. A time capsule of what it has sounded like to play this sport in this country, year after year, decade after decade.

The 15 teams heading to the World Cup don't just represent different age groups. They represent different eras of the sport, and different eras of music. For the women, those four decades trace a generation-by-generation expansion of access to sport in the United States.

The O-65 Women picked up sticks in the early 1970s, before Title IX had fully taken hold. There were no recruiting showcases and no club teams. They played on grass and the soundtrack was Diana Ross, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, and Rocky on the boombox. The O-55 and O-60 Women came up in the late '70s and '80s, when Title IX was beginning to reshape college athletics. Programs were expanding and the first turf fields were appearing. Pat Benatar, Survivor, Madonna, and Bon Jovi were turned up loud on a yellow school bus.

The O-45 and O-50 Women were in high school and college in the '90s and early 2000s, when club hockey was booming, turf was everywhere, and recruiting showcases were a rite of passage. Their playlists run through Chumbawamba, Eminem, Lil Jon, and The Killers. The O-35 and O-40 Women grew up in the modern era—highlight reels on YouTube, EDM in the locker room, Beyoncé on the warm-up mix. Their pre-game music sounds different, but the ritual is the same.

For the men, the story is a bit different. Field hockey in the U.S. has never had the high school and college infrastructure for boys that the women's game built. Most of the USA men competing in the WMH World Cup came from countries where field hockey is a national obsession—Argentina, the Netherlands, India, Pakistan, Australia, Germany—and brought their sticks with them when they emigrated. The USA Men's Masters program today is, in large part, a melting-pot community. You’ll hear this in their music preferences, such as O-50 Men’s athlete Alan Scally, who jams to Que Ves? by Divididos. "My favorite Argentinean band,” said Scally, who hails from Argentina.

The O-35 Men’s collective list of songs reads like a global radio station: M83, Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso, Scooter, Don Omar, Wisin y Yandel, plus reggaetón and merengue, threaded in alongside Earth, Wind & Fire, and AC/DC. A sport held together by those who carved out their own space for a sport the rest of the world has long loved.