USE OF GLOVES IN FIELD HOCKEY BEGINNING TO SPREAD

By Al Mattei

Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

"We had no broken bones, just the bruises on our shins from a long season."

--excerpted from a 1934 yearbook at Burlington St. Mary's Hall (N.J.)

In the old days of field hockey, with the long skirts and long-toed sticks, young women were grateful for a chance to play what was then the only socially acceptable form of athletic activity in some parts of the country.

Means of protection from injury, however, were incidental. The game of field hockey was thought to be genteel, with little chance of getting something other than a bruise from the hard cricket ball used in the contest.

Most notions of gentility, however, have left the game in the past 30 years. Shinguards and helmeted goalkeepers are part of the game, and head injuries from sticks and undercut drives are occurring at an alarming rate.

But also alarming is the frequency of hand injuries, as well as the simple protective measures which can be taken to prevent them. Few field hockey players these days wear hand protection of any kind, despite the enhancements in technology which can help grip and prevent serious injury.

At least one prominent scholastic coach has realized this. Susan Butz-Stavin has coached Emmaus (Pa.) to more more than 400 wins and several state championships in Pennsylvania, where field hockey is more physical than in any other place in America.

As such, she considers her willingness to outfit her team with any kind of glove available a competitive advantage in free-swinging Pennsylvania.

"I have seen too many hand injuries over the years," said Butz-Stavin. "If we can cut down in one area of injury, so much the better. And we can stop people from saying 'Ouch!' in the middle of the game and stop playing."

Check out today's Emmaus teams and you see a kaleidoscopic variety of gloves. Some look like football lineman's gloves, which are fingerless, but have padding on the back of the hand. Others look like cricket gloves, with full-finger protection sewn onto the back of each finger, stuffed with horsehair.

Other players in the United States have adopted the use of knuckle guards, which are used to protect the hand against scrapes on artificial turf while making a block tackle. These do not protect the fingers very well, nor the back of the hand.

Regardless of the hand protection used, the most important factor in a glove is not its construction, but the willingness to use it. The willingness can come from a rational realization that the hand, despite the rules of the game, can look like it went through a meat grinder after a season's worth of games.

Most people, however, use a glove only after a bad injury on an unprotected hand, to protect the healing area or to prevent it from happening again.

Gloves are often seen more in playoff games, especially in frigid weather, where the heating of extremeties keeps players warmer.

However, at least one player uses her gloves to help her hand contact her hockey stick with a larger contact patch.

"I find that gloves give me a better grip," says midfielder Ashlee Duncan of Easton (Md). "These are my lacrosse gloves, so I'm used to them."