In 2009, at the Pan American Cup, the United States men’s national field hockey team was an overtime goal away from taking the lone Pan American Hockey Federation automatic berth to the 2010 FIH World Cup.
Three years later, with an interim head coach, one of its best players missing, and a developmental system that is still in the cradle, USA Field Hockey made the decision to pull the men’s team out of a last-chance six-nations qualifier in New Delhi, India.
It’s a shocking fall, to be sure.
And it’s going to lead to much finger-pointing within the American field hockey community that the national governing body of the sport quit on the men’s team while funneling all of its resources — including the former men’s national team head coach — into the women’s side.
“Unavailability of many of the senior players has left the men’s program in a position where our best assembled team has a performance potential well below that required to be competitive in a tournament of this caliber,” said USA Field Hockey technical director Terry Walsh in a prepared statement.
The key unavailability was Patrick Harris, one of U.S.’s best players, and a winner of the Player of the Week award in the Dutch Hoofdklasse. He pulled out of the Pan American Games team citing his work with the Dutch firm Onesails, a custom sail production company.
The announcement of Harris’ non-participation in the Pan Ams, announced on Sept. 16th on the USA Field Hockey website, set off a viral firestorm of Internet speculation on whether there was a split within the team, or whether there was a split between team and coaching staff.
Whatever the case, the all-for-one spirit of the Boys in Blue just three years ago was absent during the Games, and the U.S. team finished fifth.
It’s not the first time in recent history the U.S. didn’t send a team to a particular tournament. A few years back, a women’s senior team was not fielded for a Champions Challenge II tournament, and the lack of rankings points from that event is still hampering the U.S. team’s world ranking.
But this decision is a setback for those (such as this space) who want to see field hockey as a sport for everybody — regardless of race, gender, class, and region — in this country.
A few points about this:
1-If the women had not qualified directly through the Pan Ams and were attending a qualifier do you think the decision on the men’s team would have been the same?
2-The men’s team sits at essentially the same world rankings position it did when Nick took over as coach. The Jr Development that is taking place which Steve Locke refers to in the article has essentially been an extension of the Moore Park program. That has been going on for quite some time and the pipeline for development does not seem to have improved.
3-If there is so much emphasis on the importance of the jr team why did the Women’s Nat team compete in the jr men’s championship (I wrote a letter to Steve about this at the time)? They essentially used the event as a training and selection tool for the women’s national team. That seems to me to be a very bad idea for jr men’s development.
At the end of the day the NGB made the decision to withdraw the men’s national team from the qualifier because they felt they could do it in a defensible manner and use those resources elsewhere. The justifications around development, world rankings etc don’t seem like the real reasons behind the decision. If you read the statement from Steve Locke it starts out in a very defensive tone. That is usually a sign that you know you aren’t doing the right thing. It makes me very sad for the team but more so for men’s hockey in this country and the perceptions it will foster around the world.
Greg Nathan