Field hockey to host AE tourney

The University at Albany field hockey team ended their regular season with a loss last Saturday, but the team is focused more on the upcoming tournament this weekend.

   The Great Danes (12-4, AE 4-1) will host the American East Conference Championship for the second-straight year and won’t be dwelling on their most recent loss to New Hampshire as they had already clinched the home-field advantage the previous week.

   “It’s tough because after last week we got the win we needed to get the position we wanted, so home field advantage is humongous,” coach Phil Sykes said. “If we won today, great, if we didn’t, in all actuality it didn’t matter. I think we played very well, good enough to win by a few goals. We just have to finish our chances. I think it just adds a little fuel to our fire for next week to take this team down. ”

   UAlbany out-shot its opponents, 13-8, in the 2-1 loss, but senior defender Jess Lindsey said the team is using the game as a preview of next week’s match up.

   “It was a way to see our opponents for next week, but the game is next weekend,” Lindsey said. “That’s when we’re going to bring it all to the field.”

   Junior goalie Christine Hoffman agreed, said that this loss is only going to make the team stronger for this weekend.

   “If anything it’s going to motivate us more to push ourselves harder at practice to win the conference,” Hoffman said. “It proves that the teams that we are going to be going up against are going to be hard, and we just need to work really hard this week to get better for next weekend.”   

   Sykes said the team’s consistency has been its strongest factor.

“I think that showed in our conference play to get us to where we’re the regular season champions and we’re hosting,” he said. “I think we just have to continue to do what we’ve done to get us here. Our consistency and composure under pressure have been rock solid basically every game. And our defense has given us a chance to win every game.”
   Lindsey says this is because they have a lot of “pride and confidence in each other.” She doesn’t expect this week’s practice to be any different.

   “We’re just going to keep working on our defense,” she said. “We have a very solid defensive team all-around. We’re going to work on our corners, capitalize on our shots – stuff like that.”

   Sykes says that this part of the season is very difficult for the players with everything they have going on, but the coaches will be working on keeping the team in the right mind set.

   “We’re just trying to keep our team sharp and focused,” he said. “It’s a short season, but it’s very intense. This state in the year you have injuries, and people are tired, they’ve got exams. We’re just going to try and keep them fresh and ready to go.”

   To make sure that the team doesn’t have repeat of last year’s post season in which the Danes won the American East but lost in their first NCAA Tournament game, the coaches remind the players to forget what happened in the past games.

  “We continually remind our team yesterday doesn’t really matter. It’s today what we have to do,” Sykes said. “We’re not just going to go and show up and the other team’s going to fall apart just because we’re Albany. We have to do the work to get the results.”