As community-service projects go, the one that Westfield State’s field hockey team undertook was different. It benefited not just an elementary school class but also a fledgling school of salmon that class members raised for restocking a local river.

Several members of the team recently helped students at the Chester (Massachusetts) Elementary School restock the Westfield River with young salmon, or fry, that the third- and fourth-graders raised in the classroom last spring.

The grade-schoolers received from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all of the equipment needed to participate in a broad restocking effort through the Connecticut River watershed – including the eggs from which the salmon hatched in the classroom.

The children released the fry into the West Branch of the Westfield River, which is located directly behind the school. Westfield State field hockey team members Kate Moss and Taylor Murray, along with two professors from the college and parents, helped release about 125 fry into the stream.

“It was a very educational and unique project,” said Westfield State field hockey coach Heather Cabral, who teaches at the school.

After the successful release, other field hockey team members helped the school’s parent-teacher organization that night with its annual spaghetti supper fund-raiser.