Melissa Ponzio serves as the Committee Chair for USA Field Hockey’s All Starz Committee, where she leads the national initiative to expand adaptive field hockey and make the sport accessible to athletes of all abilities. She is also a Board Member and the Chief Programming Officer for Able Athletics, shaping inclusive programming across all sports. In 2025, Melissa was honored with USA Field Hockey’s Grow the Game Award for her leadership and impact, and she also serves on the NFHCA DEI Committee.
A dedicated educator for two decades in the Bedford Central School District, Melissa is currently a high school Adaptive Physical Education teacher. She brings a distinguished 20-year career in teaching and coaching field hockey, including 10 years as the Fox Lane Varsity Field Hockey coach. Melissa also acts as commissioner for Somers Youth Field Hockey and coaches with Coach Brit Field Hockey.
As a mother of two—one of whom is an Able athlete—Melissa’s experience as an adaptive PE teacher, longtime coach, and parent of a child with unique challenges fuels her commitment to inclusive sport. Her leadership, vision, and passion for making athletics accessible to every athlete make her an invaluable part of our community.
Friedberg, of Old Greenwich, Conn., is the CEO of Hampstead Park Capital Management, which he founded in 2016. The investment firm is an active, constructive, long term investor in small cap public and private companies in the United States and Canada. Over the last 30 years, Friedberg has focused both as an investor and consultant as a Partner at Bain & Company, investing and actively working with companies to provide a combination of capital investment, operating improvement and strategic support, and in a governance role to support management teams to maximize long term shareholder value. He has invested in more than 30 companies, serving on five public boards, taking two private, and numerous non-profit boards.
Friedberg has been involved in youth sports and education for over 20 years in a range of capacities. He has been involved with National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), Performance Sports Group (Bauer, Easton, Cascade, and Maverik), VICIS Football Helmets, Greenwich Skating Club and as a USA Hockey youth ice hockey coach. He is a member of Cornell’s Johnson Business School Development Committee and serves on the Advisory Council of Cornell’s business school.
Friedberg received his Master of Business Administration in 1987 from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell and a Bachelor of Science degree in 1984 from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in England.
Rogers lives in Oxford, Ohio, and serves as an assistant coach at Miami University, a U.S. Men’s Masters Team athlete and an international technical official. In addition, Rogers is the administrator of the fieldhockeycorner.com website, which has been used by coaches, players and fans as a resource for schedules, results, rankings, statistics and polls for all three divisions of NCAA field hockey for the past 15 years. He collated the national coaching and playing records for Division I, II and III, while doing ground-breaking research on early field hockey history. Rogers serves as the chair of the National Grow the Game committee and has been instrumental in starting new programs at colleges in all divisions.
