BARB SKIBA: FUNDAMENTALS AND FAMILY
By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is a short story about how a life can be altered by a single event.The career of Barb Skiba is a long story written over some three decades, but when The Founder sat down with her in August of 1999, she was carrying with her a laminated piece of newsprint. The date on it came from what was her darkest hour: the 1995 field hockey season.
That was the first season that her field hockey team failed to make the state tournament, having fallen short of the .500 mark by the New Jersey cutoff date. Much can be read into that strange season, one which saw her have to break one of her own unwritten rules about playing ninth graders.
Skiba's last half-decade was a turbulent one off the field. The demographics of her players changed, her long-time assistant left the program, and she found herself having to take care of an ill parent. She announced her retirement in 2000 after more than 300 wins and countless changed lives.
This interview was done in 1999, within sight of the place she loved most: the green and perfectly flat home hockey field at Pennington Hopewell Valley Central (N.J.). Well, it was mostly brown that day, thanks to a dry summer. Oddly enough, the greenest spots on the field were three odd-shaped spots at the south end, reminders of a senior prank which saw three trees transplanted onto the unspoilt lawn a couple of months earlier.
The fact that Skiba's hockey field was used as a prank target speaks volumes about the significance that one acre of land holds at the school. It will endure: as will Skiba's legacy there.
The scoreboard sign overlooking the hockey field at Pennington Hopewell Valley Central (N.J.) says it all: "This Is Bulldog Country."
The field is perfectly flat, and -- subject to the climate -- is a verdant greenswaard for as far as the eye can see. A sloped embankment provides great sidelines for one of the best places to watch a scholastic field hockey game in the United States.
"Ever since Tony Pragliola has taken over, he's done a great job -- except for when the laws of nature take over," Skiba says. "I remember the 1994 ice storm: that killed my field. And when it had to get fertilized (in the spring of 1998) there was no rain afterward, so when the grass came back, it was in clumps. But in the spring, it was absolutely gorgeous -- it was like a carpet."
To Barb Skiba, her hockey field is a fundamental part of her field hockey family. Its welfare is as important as those who have played on it.
For three decades, her modus operandi for coaching field hockey has been folksy, family-oriented, and old-fashioned. And it has worked.
Many young women who have attended Hopewell Valley in Skiba's quarter-century of coaching have found themselves on the field hockey team. Entire families have gone through Skiba's program, and she can tick off the surnames like an accountant ticks off line items on a spreadsheet -- Clark, Smith, Rueter, Abbott, Tena.
Actually, on this day, Skiba is holding a sheet of paper with numbers on the left side, words on the right. It is her year-by-year record at Hopewell Valley, and attached to each year are notes on her leading scorers and what championships each team has won.
Numbers say a lot about her successes: three sectional championships, more than 300 wins. They also talk about the single failure that has bothered her since 1995 -- the one season in which her Bulldogs did not make the New Jersey state tournament.
"That year," she says, "I had a different kind of player on the team. They liked hockey, but it wasn't the be-all, end-all. But since then, it has become a motivational point. Every team, from then on, wants to make the state tournament."
Hopewell has done so for just about every year since Skiba has coached. Some years, her teams have done better than others; in 2000, coaching in her 27th and final state tournament at Hopewell, the Bulldogs exited the Group II North 2 sectional tournament with a 1-0 loss to Basking Ridge Ridge (N.J.).
Other years have been much more successful. In fact, Hopewell Valley field hockey has approached greatness on more than one occasion. Their final ascendency into the rarefied air of state hockey was in the early 1990s, when Hopewell dropped the Central Jersey Group II final to West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.) in a post-overtime shootout. It was the last time the Bulldogs would play for a sectional title.
Hopewell's best chance at a state championship came in 1985 against Pequannock (N.J.). It was a game which went into overtime, which, at that time, was 11-on-11.
"Their strategy was these huge scoops -- 50 yards downfield. It took a whole half to get used to it," Skiba said. "I can see what happened (in the final minute of play): a scoop downfield, the ball went to the right wing, crossed in front, and the ball went in. The game is over with 15 seconds left in double-overtime."
It would be easy to let that day become an point of obsession for her, chasing that elusive state championship like Ahab chasing the mythical giant fish.
"It was great for us, getting that far," Skiba said. "But it was awful for us at the same time."
Instead, Skiba has chosen to couch her field hockey career in terms of people and the great athletes that have worn the black and gold. She has great tales to tell about her players, including Holly Trumpovicz, her attacking center midfielder who, in 1981, scored what is reputed to be the greatest goal ever scored in the capitol region of New Jersey. It was in the first half of a Central Jersey sectional final against Shore.
"The thing is, Nancy Williams knew it was coming, because she had scouted us," Skiba said. "Holly was just so good at this particular flick that she would just float the ball right over the goalie's head. We played defense the entire second half and won 1-0."
There is Bernadette Powell, Skiba's first real superstar athletic type who was able to mix her track quickness with a tremendous hit. And there is the midfielder and basketball shooter who would eventually find success as the commissioner of the Women's National Basketball Association, Val Ackerman.
"You know, there was one day when the varsity, JV, and freshman teams played on the same day, and in those days I coached them all," Skiba said. "I had Val playing for me, and so I had her father Randy, our athletic director, coach the freshmen that one day we had a conflict. They won, and Randy was so proud of himself because he coached a hockey game and won.."
In the late 80s, Skiba's rememberances turn to those of groups -- either sisters or front-liners. The Smith sisters, Linda and Terri, were tremendous executors on penalty corners. So was her 1988 front line of Jackie Hymans, Roxanne Tena, Ann O'Hara, and Tami Stein.
"Back in the days of Bernadette and Holly, we had a 'flow chart' approach -- if Holly didn't get the flick off, we'd go to Plan B, then Plan C, then Plan D," Skiba said. "But later, we went to numbers. Mostly, I would draw up the corners, but the players would call the numbers."
In Hopewell's best seasons, the team would be incredibly deadly on corners, a byproduct of meeting USA Field Hockey founder Constance Applebee, who coined the mantra, "Every corner is a goal."
"I was in high school, and my coach, Pat Zaccone, played on North Jersey Field Hockey Association, and teams from England came to play an exhibition," Skiba said. "The high-school teams would play a round-robin playday, prior to the big game. One particular day, when it was an English team playing against North Jersey, Constance Applebee was at the game and shook hands with everybody. Somewhere, I think I have an old picture of her."
Skiba's coaching is an eclectic mix of the an old-fashioned philosophies, combined with the fitness, skills, and tactics of the modern game. The changing tactics, however, have been an acquired taste.
"If I ran field hockey, I would try to keep the rules more consistent," she said. "I mean, how many high school sports have so many major rule changes every single year?"
Skiba does keep that "living history" perspective in mind when she discusses nuances like that fifth field player on corners, the roll-ins which took place when she played, and the removal of offside in the 1990s.
"You would have thought that would have opened up the scoring, but it hasn't done so," she says. "That speaks to the kind of athletes we have on defense as well as offense. And I would agree that perhaps we aren't creating players who can finish on offense."
Skiba has not only noticed the changes in the game, but in the kinds of players she coaches. The region from which Hopewell Valley accepts students had been a blue-collar and farm area in the early to mid-70s. The farmland, however, has been gobbled up by developers seeking to place identical half-million-dollar mansions in close proximity.
Too, several chief executives of million-dollar corporations have made their homes in the area. The type of hard-working player Skiba has come to rely on has given way to teenagers who have had their opportunities handed to them. With that have come all the complexities endemic in American society.
"The social life is totally different now, and Hopewell Valley has gotten the reputation now: it's called Party Central," she said. "And, you worry about these kids: we have had a couple of students in the school die in car accidents, and I hope it doesn't happen again."
The demographics have also split families between field hockey and soccer for the chosen fall sport at Hopewell. Whereas a number of families had all their girls playing for Skiba in the early years of her career, many families have become split, with older sisters playing field hockey and younger sisters choosing soccer.
"The Hopewell Valley Soccer Association is this huge operation now, and they start the kids from when they can walk," Skiba said. "We used to have junior hockey in grades 4, 5, and 6, but we dropped down to about 20 kids -- I think this was in the late 80s -- and it was stopped."
But, in recent seasons, she was able to retain at least one complete set of sisters in field hockey: the Batchas. Hillarey played in the mid-90s, and younger sister Meredith became the first freshman in Hopewell Valley's varsity hockey history to score a goal in 1996.
Their personal histories illustrate the raft of choices young athletes face in the post-Title IX era.
"Meredith had been a three-sport athlete at first -- field hockey and lacrosse for us, and she would play ice hockey for the Princeton Tiger Lilies club," Skiba said. "But after she blew out her knee freshman year, she gave up ice hockey, mostly because she and a bunch of others started playing indoor lacrosse in a league. Between that and basketball for some of our girls, it is hard to fit something like Futures in there."
Skiba has been one of New Jersey's most vocal critics of the National Futures program -- not necessarily because of its outcome.
"It does give the kids great coaching and it gives them the chance to play year-round," she says. "But when it first came out, I saw it was just a big money-making operation for the US Field Hockey Association. If they had a Futures program for each area, so that they could gather in one spot, that's great. But when you have to travel here, there, and everywhere, that's a lot."
Skiba is also seeing that opportunities for the single-sport athlete are rising, but for those who want to broaden their athletic horizons, the choices have dwindled. Skiba's coaching resume includes field hockey, lacrosse, basketball, and tennis.
"Rarely do you have a Grace Rarich, whose life is hockey," Skiba says. "For a lot of hockey kids today, hockey is not No. 1 -- there's grades, there's boyfriends, there's the social life."
Skiba feels lucky that she has seen the women's sports revolution of the late 1990s come to pass.
"Having grown up in the 60s and 70s, as a player in sports people didn't care about, it's unbelievable to see Madison Square Garden packed for the WNBA All-Star Game or the Rose Bowl packed for the Women's World Cup," she said. "I don't think that young women realize the scope of this: they think it's the way it always was. I got to go to the WNBA All-Star Game -- I had a little pull -- and I see the little girls wearing the jerseys, and it's great."
Skiba made the decision to retire in 2000, turning over the program -- which she calls "the greatest job in the world" -- to a new generation of coaches. Perhaps the decision was made easier with the resignation of long-time associate head varsity coach Mary Louise Vennetone, who, as a goalkeeper for West Amwell South Hunterdon (N.J.), beat Hopewell twice in one season in the mid-70s. Vennetone is one person she will miss.
She will also miss the competition, especially against the likes of nearby Princeton. Whenever the Bulldogs would play Princeton -- whether in 1973 or in later seasons -- greatness seemed to ensue.
"We were the primary rivalry in Mercer County," Skiba said. "In 1974, we tied them, and at that time, it felt like a win, since we hadn't ever beaten them until I got there. The thing about Princeton is that we would play them twice a year in the regular season, and would always play them in the state tournament. It was always a one-goal win, or a one-goal loss. That would bring the people out to see the games."
Games played on a 100-by-60-yard verdant patch of grass, well-worn by time and the influence of one Barb Skiba.