OPINION: VACANCY IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A NEW START

By AL MATTEI

Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

There was some symbolism when The Boston Globe came out with a story Sept. 30 that U.S. women's national team coach Pam Hixon had resigned her position.

The symbolism was that the field hockey community had known since early June that Hixon was out of a job after Team USA's eighth-place showing at the 1998 World Cup of field hockey. However, it did not come out in the news media until several months later.

Such has been the case for many years, where moves within the U.S. Field Hockey Association have often been done out of the public eye.

In these days where news coverage of sport has reached saturation, examining what many consider the minutiae of what makes a sport go, the USFHA has remained pretty much shrouded in mystery, even while the dynamic Hixon was the head coach.

It is quite unlike the very public firing of another U.S. national team coach after a dismal World Cup showing. When you compare the careers of Hixon and U.S. national men's soccer coach Steve Sampson, you wonder what kind of justice there is in sport.

Sampson helped bring U.S. soccer off the agate page and into the headlines thanks to major international cup wins as well as brilliant wins over Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Stars were made of players like Claudio Reyna, Eddie Pope, and Kasey Keller.

Hixon, however, had no significant wins against the likes of The Netherlands or Argentina, and Team USA's highest finish in a major international competition was a bronze medal in the (1994-95) Champions' Trophy. And players like Tracey Fuchs and Kelli James can walk through hotel lobbies without making a stir.

Hixon not only did not get the job done on the international scene, but domestically. Field hockey is, despite a revolution in women's sports in the late 1990s, regarded far below the place where a sport of its history and heritage should.

Under Hixon's watch, the National Futures program became much more important for national-team selection, as well as a huge revenue source for the USFHA. It also, according to many in the American field hockey community, became politicized and less apt to select the best player pools for national teams.

Hixon's generalissima style allegedly rubbed many the wrong way. Former players have told TopOfTheCircle about training standards based on formula rather than on individual needs. Members of the coaching community have expressed dismay about rumored experiments with dietary supplements like creatine in hopes of enhancing performance.

It is also the feeling of many in field hockey that the NCAA Division I Final Four had, under Hixon's tenure, become a semi-private tryout for national-team duties rather than a marketing opportunity for the game. The sites for the past several years -- Boston, Chestnut Hill, Mass., and Storrs, Conn. -- had been an easy drive from Hixon's central Massachusetts home. Those sites were not ideal for field hockey fans, who are concentrated in the mid-Atlantic region.

Where does the U.S. Field Hockey Association go from here? What kind of coach is needed for a national team which needs to win the Pan American Games tournament to make it to the Olympic Games in Sydney?

It not only requires a brilliant tactician, but someone who is media-savvy and is a brilliant marketer.

Field hockey is one of the only NCAA sporting events whose championship is not televised under the billion-dollar CBS or ESPN contracts. That needs to change.

Field hockey had, thanks to the former U.S. Olympic Festival, been growing in places like Northern California and Oklahoma thanks to the generous spirit of players willing to preach the gospel of the sport. These days, the National Futures Tournament takes place in a county in Maryland where there is no scholastic field hockey. Moreover, the players are not allowed to leave the area where the tournament is held. That needs to be examined.

Field hockey has not become the marketing vehicle it could be for equipment, thanks to the federation's unwillingness to work deals with major sponsors. While U.S. national teams have been swimming in Nike, Reebok, and adidas dollars the past several years, members of the women's field hockey team have had to take part-time jobs while training.

Field hockey, despite its history among women in the U.S., does not have a national league. The 1998 USFHA Summer League was an admirable step, but it fell short in terms of marketing. No programs were available for fans at the site. There were no pregame introductions, no national anthem. There was so little publicity for the league, there were virtually no die-hard fans in the stands when the Summer League came to the place where people tend to go out of their way to see a good field hockey game: central New Jersey.

And one simple marketing tool was painfully absent: giving the six Summer League teams a personality. The six teams were known as Red Team, White Team, Blue Team, Green Team, Purple Team, and Yellow Team. The simple act of naming the teams (New England Redcoats, Wilmington Doves, Jersey Blues, Carolina Evergreens, Philadelphia Violets, Virginia Canaries) could have been a marketing tool, and it would have given players and onlookerrs a regional rooting interest.

It is time, it says here, for the next national team coach not only to be a good on-field motivator, but an ambassador for the game in the United States. Whether the coach is native or foreign born, such a coach would bring the game out of the shadows into the light of opportunity for the next century.

What do you think? Email us at topofthecircle@aol.com, and we'll try to print a random sampling of your opinions, as long as you are willing to give us your name and let us know where you are from.