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Coach Stone released the final schedule recently with several changes from the spring temporary release. The most noticeable change was moving the first game from August 28th to 6pm on August 26th at Rappolt field. That move started a series of changes.The most important change was to move the first day of preseason to August 9th instead of August 11th. The earlier start gives the Leopards two days more of practice before the first scrimmage.

Given the large class the two day earlier start is welcomed by the Lafayette coaching staff to give them more time to assess and train the 2016 version of Leopard Field Hockey. This may be one of the earliest starts for the field hockey team in my memory.

The first game will be with Fairfield University, a former member of the Patriot League. They were the MAAC champions last year and played Patriot League champion Boston University in the NCAA first round game. Although they lost that game, they have a strong contingent returning. Fairfield also spent 9 days in May on a european tour after a strong spring season. They will be ready when they arrive from Connecticut on the 26th and will be bringing a good attitude and good skills to Easton.

The Leopards will need to be ready for that home opener and the preseason will be crucial to doing their best. So August 9th for all you Leopards who are working hard on your training regimen.

As for the rest of you fans check out the schedule on http://www.goleopards.com, as there are several other changes since spring release!!

Sarah Dalrymple was scheduled to start on July first as Head Coach Stone’s addition to the Leopards coaching staff. She comes to the Hill after serving a two year stint at Hofstra where she was responsible for team practice organization, player development , recruiting evaluation, equipment and team travel operations and other administrative responsibilities. But it was her coaching skills that were put in operation early on as she worked Stone’s Total Hockey Field Hockey Camp last week.

The camp gave Dalrymple, current Lafayette players who worked the camp, as well as rising freshmen a chance to get to know one another. Sarah is a 2011 graduate from Temple and served as the team captain in her last season in 2010. She was the team defensive MVP and earned regional  all-american and all-conference honors in her senior year. She was a member of the US National Indoor team in 2012 and 2013 and a member of US National Developmental Squad in 2010 and 2011.

Before her time at Hofstra, Dalrymple was an assistant at Longwood where she served as acting head coach during the spring of 2012. The ebullient coach said when she saw that Stone was looking, she gave her a call that led to her eventual appointment. ” I was extremely excited to be joining a great program.”

I reminded her that she was player at Temple as an opponent. ” Yes those were all tough games. I remember particularly a 2-2 overtime game in which Temple fell,” she remarked. I reminded her that Temple had the best of the Leopards the year before 3-1. I then asked if it would be weird coaching against 3 teams she was associated with this year,since Temple, Longwood, and Hofstra appear on the Leopard schedule this year.  “Actually my first year at Longwood, Temple came down to play and we competed against my former teammates, however there is a now a new coach and new players. Much is the  same at Longwood, but I suppose I don’t have to spend the same amount of time looking at Hofstra  tapes,”she volunteered.

I asked if she would be responsible for the defense and goalies and she responded,” Yes, I will working with the goalies,but I  hope to be helpful all over the field. Few people know I was recruited as a field player at Temple. The summer before I arrived, I seriously broke my ankle. We only had one goalie and the coach asked me to be the second goalie. So yes, I volunteered!  By my junior season I was the starter and the rest is history.” Sara will have three goalies to work with, senior Kaitlyn Arnold, sophomore Gabrielle Ulery and freshman Sara Park. She has met all three and I can say they are all excited to work with her.

Coach Stone has said, “Sarah is an energetic, passionate, and driven coach, and we’re excited to welcome her to College Hill.”

The team reports on August 11, less than one month from today and I have heard that many members of the team will arrive early staying at apartments of those living off campus to work out together without coaches prior to the official start. Sounds to me like the team is anxious to get going. Go Pards!!

Coach Jennifer Stone who runs the Total Field Hockey Camp at Lafayette College had her student athlete campers trade the hockey turf for the classroom, for an hour on monday. The group of over 100 high school and rising college athletes marched into Oeschle Hall, the headquarters for the psychology and neuroscience departments at Lafayette, to hear Dr. Megan Cannon, a sport psychologist explain how to improve their mental health and  achieve peak performance as a student athlete. She works for Mind of the Athlete,  a sports psychology consulting firm. They consult with many schools including Lafayette to help foster an environment  of positive communication, encouragement, and cohesion to achieve success.

Dr. Cannon competed in swimming, softball and basketball as a youth, while also performing on the stage in ballet, jazz and tap dance from the age of three through college. She brought these experiences, along with her educational background to help today’s student athletes, deal with performance anxiety, nervousness, and many other obstacles to maximize performance on the field and in life.

One of the first tips was to suggest to athletes that they visualize their ideal performance, scoring that difficult goal, making a save, or the perfect pass. Visualization is important in all sports and help your mind and body to perform without conscious thought. She also discussed how to deal with bad play or mistakes and how to get over it. She introduced the idea of using a mantra to overcome nervousness and to even increase team unity.

Questions from the floor included the ideal amount of sleep required. Dr. Cannon reemphasized how important sleep was to be at you peak. ” Anyone who says they do not need sleep is lying,” she said. There was a question of naps and what was the ideal time for a nap. (26 minutes). There were suggestions to reduce pre-game anxiousness  by doing some rhythmic breathing.

Finally, she brought up the real case study of a student athlete. He was a wrestler at a major division one school and during his undefeated career won 136 straight matches. She attributed part of his success to his major….art. He would draw pictures of wrestlers in imagined holds. It was this exercise that helped him visualize his success on the mat. Dr Cannon then did an exercise where she had her audience draw themselves on the field doing a good play. Several shared their brief drawings with the assembled class.

The group left with additional tools to help deal with the pressures of being a student athlete and to perform their best on the field and in the classroom.

It’s a little over one month before the team reports for the official preseason camp. In the meantime, the independent team camps are due to start. Open to all high school and college players, many of the rising first year players will take advantage of the extra instruction, while the veteran players and coaches will act as camp councilors and teachers.  In the meantime, captain’s practices will be in full swing as the melding of the team begins to take place.  All the players will have received a regimen from the strength and conditioning staff to make sure that on August 11th the team is ready to get on to the serious business of designing schemes and lineups.

Six days after reporting in August, the 2016 Leopards will travel to Rutgers for its first taste of collegiate competition, and 6 days after that Columbia will be the final tune up before the team will tackle the regular season with Fairfield University, on August 26 at 6pm at Rappolt Field.

Senior leadership is important as they will set the tone and help bring the team together, leading by example and encouragement. This is the first class in four years that has not experienced a championship in their previous three years and they will want to do everything possible to earn that championship ring.

I contacted two of those leaders several days ago and asked them to write to me and explain what this coming season means to them, and what the team must do to have a successful season. Amanda Magadan, a first team league selection who for the past  year has been playing for the US under 21 team was the leading goal scorer for the Leopards, and her skill is quite evident on the turf. Kaitlyn Arnold is not only a Phi Beta Kappa student but is also an all league performer in the goal for the Leopards. She had the most shutouts of any goalie in the league.

Amanda wrote, ” If we want to be successful in the upcoming season, we need to work hard, be persistent, and believe! Our goals will be accomplished not by luck, but through our hard work on the field and our ability to learn from our mistakes. There is no doubt that as a team we will be faced with obstacles in the upcoming season. Maybe we are down 2-0 in the second half, but how will we react? Will our bench get louder? Our players sprint faster? Our choice to unite, believe and overcome the challenges in front of us will define our success. As a rising senior, I sincerely look forward to beginning our journey as a team and watching us grow and accomplish tons!”

Katilyn struck a similar theme in her response,” I think this can be a huge fall for us. We have a really strong group with a lot of talent. Even more than that , we’ve made huge strides as a program on developing out culture and I think that can pay dividends in the fall season. In the offseason, we’ve worked on creating an environment that breeds and encourages hard work. To be successful in the fall, we need to keep this environment as cornerstone of our team culture. If we work hard and play tough and with grit, I think we’ll be able to play with anyone.”

Along with their fellow seniors they will lead the team and will dare  their teammates to be a winner. Coach Stone remarked to me at the end of the spring season that this team didn’t want to leave the field after the last practice. The “journey” begins!!!

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of competitive athletics. But I think I have never explained why I think it should be part of the educational process. We all know how it has been abused by some universities. The recent scandals at UNC where high profile athletes were allowed to take basically no show courses, and remain eligible, is only one example. The influence of professionalism in many of the sports that generate huge sums of money for the “revenue” sports of football and basketball has caused distortions in the good that competitive athletics can do.

I am a big fan of the Patriot League, who has managed to keep everything in perspective. Looking at our own athletes, who graduate with degrees in economics, chemistry, and engineering along with a plethora of other legitimate rigorous offerings, is a source of pride for many alumni. I do get annoyed from time to time with a minority of those in the academe who berate and diminish the contributions of our athletes and the rigor and discipline they demonstrate during their four years.

I was amused during the period when Lafayette was considering joining the rest of league in offering athletic scholarships. Members of the joint committee that studied the issue were astonished ,that all things being equal, athletes received higher starting salaries than other graduates at the end of four years. I must say when I was hiring, I was much more impressed with the athlete’s 3.5 GPA than a person who spent four year planted at a desk in the library to get the same 3.5.

Athletes at Lafayette have over a 90 percent graduation rate, their GPA average is higher than the general student population , and they perform on the field. But there is even a better reason for its inclusion in the education process. It is an anchor to the real world. There is always a score that you can’t walk away from. I look at the academe today and there seems to be a sort of an Orwellian shift. Students are demanding a fundamental rethink of their education.

There is a demand by English majors at Yale to abolish classes that feature white male poets. So Chauser, Spencer, Shakespere,Milton, Pope and T.S. Eliot would be purged. At many colleges and universities some students feel they don’t like to have  to spend time with people that are not like them. Demands for segregated “safe” places are popping up all over the country. At Oberlin College, Asian students complained the General Tso’s chicken was not up to real asian standards. This is the same college where students believe no one should get less than a “C.”

At Johns Hopkins, administrators do not count first semester freshman grades. Low and behold, it discouraged new students from studying as hard as they should….duh. It  is now being phased out.

The athletic field is different. No one really cares about your background, just what you bring to the game. If you don’t do well in your studies you can’t play…. period and you have let down your teammates. Athletes have accepted a harder path and they get more out of it in the end. It is for that reason, I am proud to support our Lafayette College field hockey team…..because they earn it. The members of the team were chosen  because they are the type that have the potential to succeed.  Those new recruits who arrive this fall begin a journey filled with obstacles, but that’s just the point……isn’t it??