Madeline Inglis and Casey Fry have been on the same field hockey team for the past four years. But unlike most teammates, they don’t attend the same school.

Their team, the Washtenaw Whippets, originally combined players from Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester and Saline in their middle school and high school programs. Saline split off four years ago and Dexter just started its own program this fall.

Inglis, a sophomore at Manchester, and Fry, a senior from Chelsea, are the only returning members of the Whippets varsity team this season. They agree that playing on a combined team and not directly representing their schools has not been an issue.

“I never really thought about playing for a school,” Fry said. “Plus, I got to make friends from other schools that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I kind of always knew in my time there wouldn’t be a school team. I just wanted to play.”

Former and present Whippets coaches don’t see the breaking up of the team as a negative thing.

“The plan overall for the Whippets was to offer field hockey experience to kids who went to schools where there was no field hockey program,” said Don Hes, former co-coach of the Whippets and current head coach at Saline. “It was all planned, and it worked out well.”

Hes said the Whippets started with 10 players in 2004. Last year, between the Whippets and Saline, nearly 70 players were involved at the junior varsity and varsity levels.

“The goal of the Whippets has always been to start a program and then let them spin off and start their own,” said Roxy Block, a founding Whippets coach and current co-coach of the team.

Even though Dexter took 11 Whippets players to start its own program this fall, Block isn’t concerned about the welfare of her team.

Since Dexter decided to have its team, the Whippets have been recruiting new players and eliminated their JV team, creating a surplus of players to use as substitutes - something they were missing last year.

“It’s a blessing in disguise,” she said. “We’re going to have a better chance of holding our own (with subs),” Block said.

Dexter head coach Craig Flocken, formerly an assistant coach for the Whippets, said while he enjoyed his time with the Whippets, many players from Dexter were dissuaded from joining the team by having to drive to-and-from the program’s field in Chelsea.

“Having it right here at the high school, we have 31 girls who made the team,” Flocken said. “So that’s huge, going from 10 to 31 playing from the school.”

Manchester has always contributed the fewest players to the Whippets, so Chelsea’s involvement with the Whippets is now essential to Inglis playing at all.

“For Manchester, we just recently started to get more than two people on the team,” Inglis said. “It’s just good to be part of a team when you’re from a small school.”

Inglis and Fry have played against former Whippets on the Saline roster over the last three years, but that will be a more common occurrence now that two teams have former Whippets in their ranks.

“It’s fun (playing former teammates),” Fry said. “It’s a little weird sometimes. It’s almost like practice. It’s fun to see them again.”

“We still keep in touch,” Inglis said. “We’re still friends with them.”

Fry also sees Dexter splitting off as a sign that the sport is growing in Michigan.

“It’s nice, because now we have more teams to play,” she said. “When I started we had very few. Now we have 23 teams in the state and that’s a huge improvement from when I started.”

Although the Whippets are down to two schools from which they take players, Block said the chance of separating the schools any further is slim.

“I think we have an identity as the Whippets,” Block said. “Staying as the Whippets is more inviting to both teams - it doesn’t seem to be a deterrent to play for the Whippets and not take on Chelsea or Manchester colors.”

Josh Coudret is a sportswriter for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at joshcoudret@annarbor.com.