ABOVE ALL, PREPARE

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Preparation is always good for any sports team: field hockey, especially, since you, and your opposition, can use any number of different tactics to try to win games. Also, there are more than four times as many skills which need to be mastered in field hockey, as opposed to other games.

Preparation takes many forms: there is the personal preparation of players, ensuring that they are in top condition.

There is team preparation, with the how practices are geared towards the next game.

But there are different kinds of team preparation which go far beyond what most teams actually do, or even conceive of doing.

The San Francisco 49ers football team, for example, have been known to go so far as to lay out a table out on the sideline with labeled containers for players' spare sets of contact lenses. That, friends, is preparation.

Preparation can begin far, far before the commencement of pre-season practices. This comes in several forms, some of which are not legal in all states.

The remainder of this essay, therefore, is offered with this caveat: know exactly what is and what is not allowed under the rules of your state's scholastic sports sanctioning body.

Your preparation for a varsity field hockey season can begin the moment the previous season is over. Many states actually allow a head coach to keep the team together for indoor field hockey games under the auspices of USA Field Hockey for participation in the National Indoor Tournament.

Indoor field hockey is incredibly valuable: it's a 6-on-6 war fought on a field roughly the size of a basketball court. Participation has spiked upwards since a number of good indoor players started winning college scholarships over the course of the 1990s.

It is valuable for goalkeepers, since they have to guard a regulation-size goal. Field players benefit by playing indoor because it improves skills and decisionmaking.

If your state does not allow out-of-season coaching by your head coach, one or two parents, along with the team captains, can take charge of forming an indoor team for competition.

Many places in the country do have recreational indoor field hockey programs in the winter months; starting one is relatively easy if one does not exist or is not readily accessible in your area.

The same goes for summer recreational field hockey; it is easy to start a regional program with little money and a group of cadet umpires who will be grateful for a chance to brush up on the rules.

The most important off-season program, however, is the USFHA Futures Program. It has had a decade-and-a-half-long record of improving players' skills more often than not.

It has also, however, alienated some coaches who believe that Futures accentuates the individual athlete rather than building a team-oriented player.

Futures, however, can be your team's best friend, as it provides valuable off-season repetitions. And, according to The Jim Davis Second Law of Field Hockey, there is no substitute for experience.

Once the season is within sight, a couple of loopholes allow teams to start working together to create that cohesion. One is the team camp, where an entire school's team can attend together in a curriculum designed for groups.

The other is the "open gym" sessions which football teams often use for strength training. Coaches can supervise field hockey players in the open gym sessions, making note of (but not coaching to) their tendencies before the start of preseason.

Coaches can also do their part to prepare by not only attending the officials' meetings, but by agreeing to volunteer to do one field hockey event over the course of the year -- whether it is a recreational, municipal, statewide, or USFHA event.

Getting coaches engaged out of season is not only good for preparation, it is also good for the game of field hockey.

Even more important, however, is getting parents to believe that they are stakeholders in the outcome of the team's games. Parental involvment in a winning program goes far beyond feeding their children the right foods, getting the players to practice on time, and the postseason banquet.

The formation of a well-utilized parents' booster club can a source of great power. It can fundraise, foster a sense of unity amongst team members, and provide a unified front when confronting different situations.

Finally, each and every practice -- from August through November -- needs to be an opportunity to learn. Make some practices skull sessions, where teams watch tapes and discuss positioning and tactics. Practice without sticks for a while to work on conditioning.

But what really needs to be encouraged is creativity and improvisation. Every field hockey team in the United States grows up with one play: the driven or carried ball up the right wing, followed by a stiff cross towards the stroke line.

It is a tendency that needs to be broken: stop yourself if you find yourself saying, "You're not going to try that during a game, are you?" You might just encourage an unorthodox finisher.