The centre of attention

Since my last entry we have beaten William and Mary, Columbia, Georgetown, lost to Princeton, ODU and Duke and beaten Davidson and beaten Longwood. The games come thick and fast here! The games we lost were to ‘ranked’ teams. Each week, the coaches of all the Division One college field hockey teams will vote for who they feel the strongest teams were that past week based on statistics, and then a ranking of the top 25 teams is released each Monday.

It tends to be quite changeable. So far, UR has featured in it at number 25, 22 and, most recently, at number 17. A lot of the Irish girls are in higher ranked colleges and would be featuring at higher positions. For example, Liz McInerney, Gillian Pinder and Emma Russell are all in Syracuse University, who hold the number one ranking as the best team in America this past week. Statistics and rankings are very important in American sport. They are much more prevalent and influential in comparison to back home. Of course, it would be great if the University of Richmond could feature weekly in this poll and for some of my team mates, it really matters a lot, but I tend not to let it phase me as long as we play well and can produce the goods when it comes to the business end of the season! The most topical and controversial issue to hit the athletics department here in UR in recent times arose this past week when the funding was cut from the men’s soccer and men’s track and field squads. Essentially, this means soccer and track and field won’t be funded by the college anymore and will become what are referred to as club teams, meaning they won’t have a coach unless he/she is volunteering, they’ll train a few times a week and play friendlies against other club teams in different colleges. Naturally and understandably, this has caused quite a bit of consternation and has upset many of the people involved with these squads. This opened my eyes a lot. What if the field hockey team had been cut? I am always grateful for the opportunity to play here but seeing this happen has cemented my previous thoughts. Anything we need as players is catered for by the college. We have a fantastic support network surrounding our team, including strength and conditioning coaches, medical team, academic team and our management on top of that. I would seriously struggle to find something that this support network could not help us with. While I feel terribly sorry for the men’s soccer and track and field teams, I think it will only make the other teams in the college more determined to succeed in their own discipline as a sign of respect and gratitude.

Before I came here, I can remember watching movies or TV series’ about American sport and noting how intense it seemed. That mindset has not changed. The media coverage of all sports is central to this. There are so many sports channels on American TV it would be a waste of time to even attempt to count them all. I was flicking through the sports channels the other day and I came across coverage of a high school field hockey match. I tried to imagine there being live coverage on RTÉ Two of Coláiste versus Comp and had to laugh at myself. There are multiple people in the athletic media department in UR whose full-time job is promoting the Spiders and all else that it entails. Our media guy is Mark Kwolek and he is also the basketball media guy. He creates highlight videos for each game. To best prepare himself to do this he comes to every home game we have and some away games and videos us before, during and after the match. It’s fair to say that the post-match interview is absolutely horrific! I make every attempt possible to avoid these but sometimes Coach picks you, and you do not get a say. I’m called a diva because whenever I am chosen to be interviewed, I insist that the camera must be a certain distance away from me. Usually he asks a few general questions and just lets me speak. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them and I kind of hope that I never have to, being honest! To read the rest of Rebecca’s diaries for SFH, click here. You can also follow her on Twitter (@BeccaBa)