Nov. 2, 2009 — Sustained excellence
Today’s Game of the Day
Martinsville Pingry School at Summit Oak Knoll (N.J.), 2 p.m.
Oak Knoll had scheduled a match against North Caldwell West Essex (N.J.) for this date, but the quarterfinals of the Group I North 2 tournament takes precedence here. Both teams have won Group I championships in the 2000s.
Last weekend, Scarborough (Maine) won the Maine Principals Association Class A state championship with an overtime victory over Skowhegan.
Yep, that Skowhegan, which had won the last eight straight state championships.
Maintaining excellence over the course of time — a week, a month, a season – is one of the most difficult things to do in the game of field hockey. Games are played on different competition surfaces at different times of the year. Random occurrences such as injury and illness can often affect play.
And, most importantly, goals are rare. It’s not like in basketball or lacrosse where a good stretch of sustained play can result in an insurmountable lead.
That’s why the decade of the 2000s is defined by the sustained excellence of Skowhegan, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.), and Lakeville Hotchkiss School (Conn.). Alongside Skowhegan’s string of eight straight title, Eastern has won 10 straight state championships, and Hotchkiss has won seven straight New England Preparatory Schools Athletic Conference championships.
These postseason tournament championship streaks are amongst the most amazing team feats in the 100-year history of scholastic field hockey in the United States.
They go right up there with West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.) and its string of 39 straight division championships, Emmaus (Pa.) and its streak of 20 straight PIAA District 11 championships, and the fact that Oklahoma City Casady (Okla.) never lost a game from 1956 to 1969.
Which do you think is the most impressive?
Nov. 1, 2009 — A whole new Wild Wild West on the Internet
Last Friday morning, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that determines how Internet domain names are applied, assigned, and used, voted to allow countries to allow countries to register domain names in their own languages.
For example, if this site was in Chinese, you could actually type in 圈子的上面 into your browser. Or in Japan, the Kanji characters are 円の上. When in Greece, you could type in Κορυφή του κύκλου. Or use Cyrillic characters such as Верхняя часть круга.
I had a discussion on this subject with a woman in my building whose expertise is in international security issues, and she believes that the registration of international domain names in their native languages could very well reopen the Wild West atmosphere of the Web endemic in the early days of the Web browser. She has a point: pornographers, terrorists, and hate groups could simply hide behind foreign-language domain names in order to promote their twisted products and messages.
Of course, it also means that cybercrime investigators in countries whose languages use the Roman alphabet will have to start learning Chinese and Hindi and Mandarin and Arabic. By the same token, however, monitors in India and Korea and Saudi Arabia won’t have to learn languages using Roman letters in order to do their work.
I find this interesting on several levels. The National Basketball Association rolled out a revamped Web presence for Spanish speakers. But instead of promoting it as nba.co.es, or nba.co.mx, or using the two-letter code for a Spanish-speaking country, the page is a subdomain of the NBA.com website.
The location is www.nba.com/enebea, with the pronunciation of the last word being EN-uh-bay-AH, which is the phonetic pronunciation of the letters NBA. The league’s clever marketers have also created a wordmark for this site, ”éne·bé·a.”
Under the new ICANN rules, could the term “énebéa” (complete with accents) be used to register a site in a Spanish-speaking country? Could Yahoo! or the Jeopardy! game show register their sites in a country where Khosi (which uses the exclamation point to signify the insertion of a click) is the native language?
This could be an opportunity for the convergence of language.
Oct. 31, 2009 — When a season ends much too soon
Today’s Game of the Day
Lawrenceville (N.J.) at Greenwich (Conn.) Academy, 2 p.m.
After Greenwich Academy’s tie last Wednesday against Loomis, the Gators take on a Big Red team which has seized the point in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League. Lawrenceville, however, has not played a game in 10 days. This could be interesting.
This website was stunned to learn that East Stroudsburg University’s athletic department has cancelled the remainder of the school’s field hockey season.
Reporting in The Pocono Record said the cancellation was over a hazing incident. The act in question? The painting of rocks on the school’s campus.
Is this an overreaction? I think so, but the thing to keep in mind as this story progresses is the role of campus police.
Officers were used to make a fake “chase” of members of the team as they are caught painting messages on large boulders on campus. Remember the scandal in Baltimore a few months ago when a state legislator used police officers to make a fake arrest of his girlfriend during a marriage proposal? These two situations constitute a misuse of police resources that could be used to keep the peace or (gasp!) solve actual crimes.
That might be the real scandal here.
Oct. 30, 2009 — Statwatch for games played through Oct. 28
Today’s Game of the Day
Moorestown (N.J.) at Haddonfield (N.J.) Memorial, 3:30 p.m.
Two of the country’s oldest field hockey programs meet in an intersectional matchup as the 100th season of scholastic field hockey in America winds down. It’s known that Haddonfield is the oldest program, albeit Moorestown may not be the oldest scholastic field hockey team in its own city; there are records of Moorestown (N.J.) Friends having a team around the time that Bess and Mary Taylor were extending the reach of their field hockey league, which had around five teams when it first played.
This week’s Statwatch includes information from, amongst others, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Camden Courier-Post, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The North County Times, LancasterOnline, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Camden Courier-Post, The Hampton-Roads Daily Press, The Easton Express-Times, The Harrisburg Patriot-News, The Newark Star-Ledger, The Trenton Times, The Virginian-Pilot, The Citizen’s Voice, The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, and the Denver Post:
TEAM GOALS SCORED, SEASON
142 Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
139 Emmaus (Pa.)
129 Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
118 Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.)
114 Ocean City (N.J.)
107 Selinsgrove (Pa.)
104 Shrub Oak Lakeland (N.Y.)
95 Malvern Villa Maria (Pa.)
93 Scarborough (Maine)
90 Bridgewater-Raritan (N.J.)
INDIVIDUAL GOALS SCORED, SEASON
48 Jill Witmer, Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.)
44 Alley Evans, Emmaus (Pa.)
41 Kelsey Mitchell, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
39 Lexi Smith, Florence (N.J.) Memorial
38 Colleen Slaughter, Ocean City (N.J.)
37 Carlee Dragon, Bridgewater-Raritan (N.J.)
34 Brenna Rescigno, West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.)
33 Hope Burke, Selinsgrove (Pa.)
32 Taylor Rhea, Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.)
31 Emma Bozek, Shrub Oak Lakeland (N.Y.)
31 Kristin Heaney, Allendale Northern Highlands (N.J.)
30 Colleen Patterson, Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
30 Taryn Schawillie, East Rochester (N.Y.)
30 Jamie Robinson, West Deptford (N.J.)
29 Kendell Combs, Suffolk Lakeland (Va.)
27 Devin Brakel, Plainsboro West Windsor-Plainsboro North (N.J.)
26 Brooke Gogel, Bronxville (N.Y.)
25 Autumn Pellman, Greenwood (Pa.)
25 Mandy York, St. Louis University City (Mo.)
INDIVIDUAL ASSISTS, SEASON
27 Kelsey Smither, Suffolk Lakeland (Va.)
23 Kate Barber, St. Louis Lafayette (Mo.)
21 Sarah Muchowski, Florence (N.J.) Memorial
20 Carlee Dragon, Bridgewater-Raritan (N.J)
20 Erika Euker, Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
19 Melissa Boyd, Hellertown Saucon Valley (Pa.)
19 Christine Hibler, St. Louis Lafayette (Mo.)
18 Megan Bozek, Shrub Oak Lakeland (N.Y.)
18 Amy Bianco, Montclair (N.J.)
18 Hope Burke, Selinsgrove (Pa.)
17 Ashley Koren, Allentown Whitehall (Pa.)
17 Kendell Combs, Suffolk Lakeland (Va.)
17 Jill Witmer, Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.)
INDIVIDUAL GOALS SCORED, CAREER
143 Kelsey Mitchell, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
110 Taryn Schawillie, East Rochester (N.Y.)
106 Taylor Rhea, Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.)
105 Jill Witmer, Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.)
101 Alley Evans, Emmaus (Pa.)
81 Colleen Slaughter, Ocean City (N.J.)
71 Megan DeMarco, Hammonton St. Joseph (N.J.)
69 Colleen Patterson, Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
65 Tollie Bell, Norfolk Maury (Va.)
63 Cara Witte, Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.)
INDIVIDUAL ASSISTS, CAREER
73 Kelsey Smither, Suffolk Lakeland (Va.)
72 Erika Euker, Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
71 Jill Witmer, Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.)
WINNING STREAK, TEAM
42 Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
GOALKEEPER SHUTOUTS, CAREER
55 Danielle Brookover, Yorktown Tabb (Va.)
As always, let us know if we’re missing something and we’ll endeavor to do better next week.
Oct. 29, 2009 — What money can’t buy
Today’s Game of the Day
Mountain Lakes (N.J.) at Madison (N.J.), 4 p.m.
Mountain Lakes, the fifth seed in the Group I North 1 Tournament, and Madison, the second seed in the Group II North 1 bracket, both have byes in the first round and scheduled this game quite presciently before the season even began.
So, what’s happened in the world of sports last week? On Sunday, Manchester United, a soccer team worth almost $1.9 billion, lost 2-0 to Liverpool.
Monday night, the Washington Redskins, a football team worth more than $1.5 billion, lost 27-17 to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Tuesday, Real Madrid, a soccer team worth almost $1.4 billion, lost 4-0 to a third-division club named Alcorcon in the Copa Del Rey, a single-elimination tournament akin to the U.S. Open Cup.
Last night, the New York Yankees, a baseball team worth $1.5 billion, lost 6-1 to the Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of the World Series.
Is there a trend here?
Oct. 28, 2009 — The seeds of discontent … again
Today’s Game of the Day
Greenwich (Conn.) Academy at Windsor Loomis Chaffee (Conn.), 3:30 p.m.
After big victories against Hotchkiss and Taft earlier this month, the Gators are suddenly in the Fairchester Athletic Conference’s catbird seat. Loomis has had more than its fair share of big victories and big losses this year; the team’s last five games (Loomis won three of them) have had margins of victory of four goals or more. Which Pelican team shows up today?
Three years ago, I wrote this.
Today, it seems almost comical, but some of the finest scholastic field hockey teams in the United States are not even the top seeds in their own postseason tournaments.
Holders of the No. 1 slot in the TopOfTheCircle.com Top 10 all season, Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.) is the second seed in the PIAA District 3 Class AAA Tournament behind Dallastown (Pa.). The Comets’ only crime? Testing themselves against Emmaus (Pa.) in the first week of the season and playing a 3-3 draw. That dropped PM .0028 ratings points behind Dallastown, which is the only team in 3-AA to finish 18-0 this season.
The folly of the seeding system was exposed yesterday when Manheim (Pa.) Township, the 17th seed, beat Dallastown 2-1 to end its season.
Now, across the river in New Jersey, the seedings for the South Jersey Group IV were released, and Voorhees Eastern (N.J.), the 10-time defending state champions, are only the third seed behind Manahawkin Southern Regional (N.J.) and Mullica Hill Clearview Regional (N.J.).
If nothing else, that pushes tougher programs like Sewell Washington Township (N.J.) and Medford Lakes Shawnee (N.J.) into the other half of the bracket.
Still, to your Founder, these kinds of seedings based solely on win-loss records is counterproductive to competitiveness. Somebody in either the news media, the athletic directorships, coaching federations, or the state governing body of sport, can do a better job of seeding.
They’ve already done it in Maryland, where the top four teams in tournament pools are pulled out, and the rest are seeded according to won-loss record. This means that a team won’t be penalized for going out of their region or out of state to fill the schedule.
And it’s also done in The Ultimate State Tournament. It deserves another read.
Oct. 27, 2009 — Top 10 for the week beginning Oct. 25
Today’s Game of the Day
Litchfield Wamogo (Conn.) at Washington Shepaug Valley (Conn.), 3:45 p.m.
This is a reverse fixture from Wamogo’s 2-0 win over Shepaug Valley on Oct. 2.
With the postseason underway in a number of states, there could be a number of changes in the next week or so in the weekly rankings. The teams at the top are in stasis; they’re that far ahead of the rest of the field.
This week’s RightToRightIsRight.com No. 11 Team of the Week is Keystone College, whose field hockey team is only in its second year of NCAA play after a dropping the sport 20 years ago when it was a community college. The Giants are the top seed in the Colonial States Athletic Conference postseason tournament, which carries an Automatic Qualifier bid to the NCAA Tournament. Wouldn’t it be something if Keystone made the dance?
1T. Millersville Penn Manor (Pa.) — 20-0-1
Won Lancaster-Lebanon championship with a 3-1 win over Mount Joy Donegal (Pa.)
1T. Emmaus (Pa.) — 19-0-1
Won Lehigh Valley Conference championship with 1-0 win over Allentown Parkland (Pa.)
3. Kingston Wyoming Seminary (Pa.) — 18-0
District 2-AA tournament this week, and only one team goes to PIAA tournament
4. Virginia Beach Frank W. Cox (Va.) — 16-0
Falcons begin the Beach District tournament this afternoon
5. Voorhees Eastern (N.J.) — 14-2
Vikings end regular season this week and begin defense of Group IV championship
6. Lehighton (Pa.) — 19-0
Indians won Mountain Valley Confredence title match on Sunday against Stroudsburg
7. Darien (Conn.) — 13-0
Got by Greenwich (Conn.) 2-1 late last week
8. Center Valley Southern Lehigh (Pa.) — 20-0
Beat Hellertown Saucon Valley (Pa.) 4-0 in Colonial League championship final
9. Greene (N.Y.) — 16-0
Won the Midstate Athletic Conference Tournament final with a 4-0 win over Walton (N.Y.)
10. Palmyra (Pa.) — 17-2-1
There may be no other team playing as well as the Cougars have the last month of the season
11. Keystone College (Pa.) — 13-2
Currently on a 10-game win streak and will play University of Scranton this Thursday as a tuneup for the postseason
Who’s out: Malvern Villa Maria (Pa.), 2-0 to Merion (Pa.) Mercy
And bear in mind: Escondido San Pasqual (Calif.) 12-2, San Diego Torrey Pines (Calif.) 11-4-1, San Diego Scripps Ranch (Calif.) 12-2, Fallbrook (Calif.) Union 13-4, Greenwich (Conn.) Academy 13-0-1, Wilmington Tower Hill (Del.) 10-1, Lewes Cape Henlopen (Del.) 11-0-1, Louisville Sacred Heart (Ky.) 18-4-1, Louisville Collegiate (Ky.) 19-2-1, Louisville Mercy (Ky.) 14-4-1, Gardiner (Maine) 16-0, Skowhegan (Maine) 16-0, Scarborough (Maine) 16-0, Hatfield Smith Academy (Mass.) 15-0, St. Louis St. Joseph’s Academy (Mo.) 16-3-1, Bridgewater-Raritan (N.J.) 18-0, Whitney Point (N.Y.) 14-1-1, Garden City (N.Y.) 13-1, East Setauket Ward Melville (N.Y.) 13-0, Shrub Oak Lakeland (N.Y.) 15-0-1, Marathon (N.Y.) 13-2, Charlotte (N.C.) Latin 15-0, Merion (Pa.) Mercy 9-4, Malvern Villa Maria (Pa.) 17-1, West Lawn Wilson (Pa.) 15-5, Hummelstown Lower Dauphin (Pa.) 14-4, Selinsgrove (Pa.) 17-1, Allentown Parkland (Pa.) 16-2, Mount Joy Donegal (Pa.) 15-4, Yorktown Tabb (Va.) 16-0, Suffolk Lakeland (Va.) 15-1
Oct. 26, 2009 — The shrinking field hockey profile
Today’s Game of the Day
Summit Kent Place (N.J.) at Montclair Montclair-Kimberley Academy (N.J.), 4 p.m.
Montclair-Kimberley earned its way into the Essex County Tournament this year, although it didn’t have the answers for West Essex. Kent Place will provide a good late-season test.
Don’t blink or you’ll miss the bulk of nationally televised collegiate field hockey this season.
Despite the existence of several national networks dedicated solely to collegiate athletics, the total number of televised field hockey games has shrunk this year to 11. Nine of these are going to be on the Big Ten Network, but only three of them are going to be live: the conference tournament semifinals and championship.
Given the number of televised field hockey games in just 16 days during the Olympics, field hockey fans should be disgusted that ESPN, Fox Sports Net, and CBS College Sports have almost completely abandoned this sport in favor of (what else) more football.
Great.
Oct. 25, 2009 — Thanks, but no thanks
Last week, this happened.
This Episcopalian says, “No, thanks. I’d rather take my chances with the unfunded oceanographer.”
Oct. 24, 2009 — County tournaments gone wild
Today’s Game of the Day
Lakeville Hotchkiss School (Conn.) at Wallingford Choate Rosemary Hall (Conn.), 4:15 p.m.
With all due respect to the likes of Wyoming Seminary and St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes, Hotchkiss has been perhaps the best story this decade when it comes to private-school field hockey. The Bearcats have won seven straight New England Preparatory Schools Athletic Conference Class A championships. Here’s how difficult that is: NEPSAC’s field hockey league is three divisions of 71 teams spread in a wide area from suburban New York City all the way to Maine, so getting into the postseason in the first place is very difficult. The Bearcats have had their difficulties this season and have already lost two of nine games. The program graduated seven seniors from last year’s 19-0 team and are now heavily on athletes who had never played the sport before coming to Hotchkiss. This Choate team will provide a stern test.
This is one of the best times of the field hockey season: county tournament season in New Jersey. Now, given the weather predicted for today, a number of tournament matches actually got pushed to yesterday or are going to be played Monday.
There are a couple of things that got me riveted to county tournaments, these single-elimination FA Cup-style in-season championships that often seem to bring out as good or better stories than league play. They give the underdog team a chance to win a championship or to do well against an opponent which is, on paper, vastly superior. Plus, each of these tournaments are a little different when it comes to how they are assembled.
Now, some of these competitions have turned out to be less than competitive. North Caldwell West Essex (N.J.) can often just show up and win the Essex County Tournament, for example. And the last 10 years, West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.) has won the Shore Conference Tournament.
But by the same token, Shore only won the SCT twice before its current streak begain, in 1986 and 1996. Now, the Shore Conference Tournament used to be unique in that it only took the top 16 teams; it now takes 21 out of its 40 field hockey-playing schools.
Now, in a bow to the upcoming switch to so-called “superconferences” in New Jersey, the Hunterdon-Warren Tournament is now the Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex tournament, which could lead to teams having to travel all the way from the New York State border to within 20 miles of Interstate 195, the traditional demarcation between North and South Jersey. This tournament is unique in that every debut match for a team in this tournament is a meeting between a Hunterdon/Warren representative and a Sussex team, giving this championship a second level of bragging rights.
Other tournaments, like the Shore Conference Tournament and the Greater Middlesex County Tournament, only involve teams in a certain conference.
The championship I’ve always admired the most, however, is the Mercer County Tournament in central New Jersey … even though a Monmouth County team, Allentown (N.J.), has been the dominant force in this championship since moving from the Shore Conference to the Colonial Valley Conference.
The MCT has always been a tournament where the team with the higher seed does not always win, and the games are showcased on turf for the semifinal and final rounds. It is also the only county tournament that guarantees consolation games so that a team losing its first-round game still has something to play for.
I’ve always wondered why more county tournament administrators don’t do the same thing.
And, oddly enough, I can hear Jim Davis’s voice in my ear saying, “You lose, you go home.”
