Tag: field hockey

 

 

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Having already been culled from a high performing group, three Lafayette incoming freshman are training and playing at the home of USA field hockey at Spooky Nook. Alix Talkow, Hailey Abbott and Molly McAndrew took to the turf for their first exposure to Division one field hockey. Virtually every player in the Under 19 division are already playing, or have signed an NLI to play this fall at the college of their choice. The competition was intense, as this is part of the selection process for the various USA teams.

Lafayette field hockey fans will have reason to be pleased. I saw good speed from the two field players ( Talkow and McAndrews) and good athletic ability in goalkeeper Hailey Abbott. McAndrews showed a big hit that will no doubt be useful to head coach Jen Stone. Talkow showed a strong sense of the game, using her speed to break open on several fast breaks.

All three players were playing on teams made of primarily New Jersey athletes while the competion is as close as Pennsylvania and as far away as California. The stands were filled with parents and college coaches, who have been here all week looking over the talent, hoping to spy that next all conference and all American player.

The weather has been ideal, providing a wonderful stage for these athletes to be evaluated. For this fan, who is waiting for the real games to start, it was a shot in the arm and a peek into the future.

Tomorrow, the crossover games for the U-19 players will wrap up the week’s future’s tournament, just as the Young Women’s National Championships will begin. Three Lafayette athletes were selected to play in that tournament.

Meanwhile, having just returned from South Africa the rest of the team will be sharpening their fitness and skills for a return for campus preseason practices in early August.

 

Three Leopard first year players will report to Spooky Nook in Lancaster,Pa today to begin practices for the National Futures Tournament (NFC). Practices begin today and games will be played Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the 24th,25th and 26th. The tournament is the premier championship event for USA Field Hockey’s Futures Program and Olympic Development Pipeline.  The NFC brings together the top female field hockey players  selected from 4,700 athletes across nine regions for a high level multi-day tournament style competition.

The USA Field Hockey High Performance staff will select top talent to represent the United States in other elite programs. The three selected who will wear the Maroon and White this fall are GK Hailey Abbott, Midfielder/ Attacker Molly McAndrew, and forward Alix Talkow. Abbot and Talkow  will play on the same   team (London), while McAndrew will play on the Athens team.

As of today London will play at 10 and 12 pm Sunday the 24th, 8:30 and 11:30 Monday the 25th and Tues at 10 am the 26th before playing a final game to decide standings that afternoon.

Athens will play 9am and 12 pm on Sunday the 24th, 7:30 and 12:30 on Monday the 25th and Tues at 8 am before the afternoon championship games.

All three of course, will be in the under 19 division where they will be with others who have already committed to attend various colleges and universities. According to Lisa McCoy, USA  Field Hockey’s Director of Futures and International Events,” We are excited to welcome this year’s selected athletes to the NFC. It is a great opportunity for athletes  to perform their best with great competition while cultivating new friendships.”

Admission is free and the championship games will be live streamed on Tuesday the 26th. These three recruits join our three Young Women’s National  Tournament selectees ( Theresa Delahanty, Lisa Welch and Sarah Park) who will begin practice next week and play in their own championship the following weekend.

Preseason for the Leopards begins in early August and these events along with the Leopards recent South Africa tour will ensure everyone arrives in shape and ready to learn and play. The first scrimmage against collegiate competition will be at Monmouth at 1pm on the 14th of August, less than 60 days from today.

 

 

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The list of names for the 2018 Young Women’s National Championship (YWNC) was announced tonight and three Leopards were among the elite athletes named. Theresa Delahanty, Sarah Park and Liza Welch will be at Spooky Nook on June 25-29. The YWNC serves as a high-level international structured competition which is a selection avenue to Junior National Camp  and an opportunity for selection to the 2018-19 U-21 Women’s National Team and the U.S. Women’s National development team. Spooky Nook is the national training center for the US National Team.

As far as I can tell no other current Patriot League teams  named more than three players. Bucknell had three named Sarah Dimock, Olivia Harris, and Kaelyn Long. Ally Hammel from Boston University also was named. Taylor Blood who graduated from BU this spring is also on the list. All the invitees were notified via official notification today!!

Delahanty is the senior co-captain and an engineering major from Washington Crossing. Welch is a senior forward from Sutton, Massachusetts and a chemistry major and Park is a junior goalkeeper from Collegeville, Pa. majoring in chemical engineering. All three just returned from a team trip to South Africa where the Leopards were undefeated. Both Welch and Delahanty scored two goals in three games. One game was played to a 0-0 tie.

Amanda Magadan who graduated in 2016 is a member of the US National Team and is preparing for the World Cup in London in July.

Congratulations to our Leopards and Best of Luck in the games.

After this sojourn, they are all international athletes, world travelers, and Lafayette ambassadors. They have embraced a different culture, touched children, experienced elephants, rhinos, zebras and springboks in their native habitats. They have seen historical sites and sampled a new geography. It was a trip to remember while sharpening their hockey skills and bonded closer as a team.

Their last visit was a view of Capetown as they saw it on the first days, high from a mountaintop. It will be an enduring memory which can recalled at reunions of the future.

Their next gathering as team will be in less than 60 days. Only they will have added to their numbers with a new incoming class. On August the 14th they will be visiting Monmouth for their first preseason game and we can all witness for ourselves the results of the trip.

These trips are designed so that every field hockey player at Lafayette gets to have a similar experience. This coming season, the team  will be playing for the Patriot League championship and to participate in the national tournament. The new players will be tested as never before, as the skill, speed and strength of their opponents and teammates will be more than they have ever experienced in their athletic careers to date. The league is improving every year, and as our veteran players know, every game must be contested as a key game!

Lafayette will put one of its most experienced teams on the turf this season and I am looking forward to an improved team chemistry. They are well led by three great captains who will motivate our Leopards to play their best. The sixty days will go by fast and in the meantime I will review the rest of the league and perhaps divert from time to time on other subjects including the US World Cup team.

So I will alert most you as I write in the near future.  I can’t wait for the new season. I am sure our Field Hockey Leopards are already thinking of it as well, as they fly home today. Welcome back ladies!!!

It was an exciting day of travel with a tough game in the evening that ended in a 0-0 tie as the Leopards frustrated the Capetown team, while controlling midfield play. However, in the end our team was also unable to find a opening to the back of the goal to break the tie.

The rest of the day was occupied with tours to Robben Island, the site of the prison that housed Nelson Mandela. The previous day was highlighted by hikes to the tops of a mountain and standing at the southern most point on the African continent. The day of touring ended with sampling of African food.

Tomorrow the Leopards will be playing the Western Province under 18 team to finish their playing schedule. After that it will be two visits to a wild game preserve. It would  not be presumptuous of me to say this may be the highlight of their trip…..PICTURES PLEASE. Then it will be boarding a plane for the long ride home. Two of our team will travel home to  Germany and Holland while many will be on campus this summer preparing for the season, doing research, and helping at the field hockey camps in early July.  That will be our first look at Rappolt Field of many of our newest team members in the incoming class.

Today our charges volunteered for the Save Foundation. After a morning in a clinic with a South African coach, our favorite team did some volunteering. By the looks of the pictures, they established some new friends. On goleopards.com they described the experience as humbling.

What is the Save Foundation you ask?? The Save Foundation is a registered non-profit organization that works to enrich, educate, and empower various township and settlement communities , as well as protect and rehabilitate wildlife in areas of Africa. Through the assistance of enthusiastic volunteers, generous sponsors , and dedicated staff, SAVE has broadened it reach from South Africa to six different countries with  thirty five humanitarian and wildlife projects over the past nine years.

They have efforts in sports, as well housing issues. From the pictures we got, it looks like all are getting into it!!

Ok your first question I am sure is “what is a Pokkel.” Here’s what my research has discovered. Pokkel in Afrikaner ( a significant part of area where Stellenbosch University resides speaks Afrikaner) means chubby, and best I can discern it’s a bulldog. Stellenbosch   University, tonight’s opponent, is about one and one half hours from Capetown. It’s celebrating its centennial this year and has a student population of 31,639. Sixty three percent of its students are undergraduates with the opportunity to study in a variety of fields which to me look like its dominated by STEM majors. In that respect, as many of our field hockey players are STEM or Economics majors, there is a commonality.

By the way, their school color is Maroon which is another area of similarity. As part of its offering it sponsors 30 sports and has large athletic facilities adjacent to the school, including two astro-turf fields. It is a diverse institution 60 % white, 20 % Afrikan black, and the rest various other races and cultures. Classes are taught in Afrikan, English and other local dialects. The school has just instituted a language policy to insure that all native speaking students have access to an education.

The sports programs are tiered to accommodate those who are casual week end athletes, and those who are more interested in intense high level competition. This will be a challenging game for our Leopards.

The team spent the earlier part of the day learning to surf. I have no information on the temperature of the water but they are all wearing shirts so I can assume its not like swimming in the 90 degree Persian Gulf.

As of early this morning the mystery of the lost hockey sticks was still active, as I have learned that their uniforms were also lost as well. However, they were hoping to have everything recovered by the this evening’s game which makes sense, since the flight they arrived on yesterday was a daily flight. Anyway, here’s hoping the Leopards arrive sartorially resplendent in their maroon uniforms armed with their more familiar hockey sticks.

GO PARDS

addendum: 2-1 win in the books!!  No details yet. Thank you Maties for the contest and best of luck to you in the future!!

It may not be August and it may not be at Rappolt Field but the 2018 edition of Lafayette Field Hockey is in full swing. The Leopards arrived at Capetown airport after a 29 hour commute to begin their South African Tour. It is without a doubt an adventure that will have it’s benefits in team bonding, but it also has all the hallmarks of preparation for the 2018 campaign.

The team did not just hop on a plane unprepared for the trip but they had spirited practices for the past week that was described by some as vigorous as any preseason preparation. The Leopards will play 3 games and have practice sessions as well. The spring has  been fruitful as the team had several tournaments which saw great progress in individual skill but more importantly we began to see the team work as a unit. By the time fall arrives this team will know where they and their teammates are on the field. The games in South Africa will solidify what has already been learned, and can be put into practice against international competition.

 

But the next week will also be a time to bond as they experience new cultures and historical sights. After landing today they will go to Table Mountain on the cable car and they later have a clinic from one of the top club coaches.Tomorrow will be their first game and no doubt they will be anxious to shake off their jet lag and get down to business.

It’s smiles all around and they greet their fans at home via social media. Have a great time ladies we are all watching you albeit from thousands of miles away.

Addendum: I have heard the team’s sticks were left in London. Hopefully, they will be returned tomorrow in time for the game!! In the meantime they have borrowed sticks from a local club!!

 

 

It’s been over fifteen years since my wife and I first proposed building a proper field hockey field for the Lafayette College Field Hockey Team. Giving away money we found was not the easiest task, when at times it came in conflict with other perceived priorities. We had already given a six figure gift to fund the VAST program, a program devoted to melding STEM courses and the liberal arts.

When we first approached the college, the reaction from the highest level at the time was… why. “No one really goes to field hockey games,” was one retort. Another was ” We have other priorities.” Or there was the one, “No one wants an artificial turf field!” We persisted and in the interim, also endowed a chair in the neuroscience department.

Today, all that is left of that philanthropy is the field hockey field. The VAST program has disappeared and there has not been a professor appointed to the chair we endowed for the last six years. Today, the field hockey team has won 3 Patriot League Championships, has been ranked as high as seventh in Division One nationally, and regularly its players are feted with all region, all American and best female athletes at Lafayette. Despite the ignorant utterances of that same official, the games now attracts between 200 and 400 people a game.

One facet of the facility that has always bothered me was the bathroom conveniences. I was assured at the outset, that there would be facilities. Yes there was, a single unisex bathroom that is required to service a crowd of up to 400 with the same thing in mind at half time and during tailgates. I have complained about it to no avail, despite the fact that funding was available for construction of additional facilities. Several years ago, a group of us got together to demand a change, and low and behold green port-a-potties appeared.

I was still not satisfied, and arranged for funding for portable bathroom trailers. The powers that be, refused to authorize the expenditure even though the funding was arranged. I can recall standing alongside a senior athletic administration official while pointing out the long lines outside the single toilet as he quipped, “maybe we could charge for use of the toilets.”

Three weeks ago my wife and I were delighted to meet with Sherryta Freeman the new athletic director at Lafayette. My ask was to allow for a new bathroom trailer in the upcoming field hockey season. Happily she agreed when I said I could raise the money, while Josh Azer Executive Director of the Maroon Club, listened and took notes. I have since talked with the athletic facilities manager and he is appraised and working to make it happen to be there before the first home game on Sept 7. With our guarantee and support, we will join the rest of the Patriot League with reasonable facilities. Embarrassed no more!!!

This whole saga may seem absurd, but illustrates the cement bureaucracies can get stuck into. Years ago we decided to concentrate our philanthropy to our living years to see its results. It has been  satisfying to see our wonderful team participate at high level division one hockey at Rappolt Field. We were disappointed to see the two other academic programs  we endowed of equal cost, fade away within 10 years of their inception.

I think Ms. Freeman will be a positive for the college and its students. This may be a small gesture, but based on our conversation three weeks ago and my perception of progress, we are encouraged.