A boy has now won the conference Most Valuable Player award in Massachusetts high school girls' field hockey for the second consecutive season.

Somerset Berkley junior Ryan Crook was named as the South Coast Conference MVP for girls' field hockey for the 2025 season – after receiving the same award in the fall 2024 season.

"That is quite good," Somerset Berkley head coach Jen Crook, who is also his mother, told The Somerset Sentinel of the league's decision. "I just think he's so unselfish and tries to set up his teammates and makes them look good. He's got great vision of the field and is fast."

Crook, a midfielder, had 10 goals, plus a team-high 33 assists, as his team won the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 2 state championship for the second year in a row. He had two assists in his team's 3-0 state title win over Hingham this year; last year, he scored both goals in his team's 2-1 title game victory over Norwood, as NewBostonPost previously reported.

Outside of girls' field hockey, Crook also plays baseball and boys' basketball at school.

The South Coast Conference features 10 high schools in southeastern Massachusetts, including nine that offer field hockey programs. The team's head coaches vote on league awards, including league MVP awards, according to The Somerset Sentinel.

Massachusetts is the one state where boys who identify as boys can play on girls' sports teams. They do so every year, and some make a significant impact on their respective teams.

The state allows boys to play girls' sports due to the 1979 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in Attorney General v. Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. The court determined that the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association's policy of the time, which stated "No boy may play on a girls' team," was unlawful. The court's view was that it violated the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution.

Here is what the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution says, in full:

All people are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.

 

The Equal Rights Amendment was relatively new at the time of that decision. It passed at the ballot box in the November 1976 general election; 60.4 percent of voters supported it, while 39.6 percent opposed it, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office. Every county in Massachusetts voted in favor of the proposed amendment.

Statewide, in the fall 2024 season – the most recent data available – 225 MIAA member schools had field hockey; 55 boys played for those teams, according to MIAA participation survey data.

The athletic director for Somerset Berkley could not be reached for comment on Monday or Tuesday.