Keene State College field hockey looks to maintain success for the rest of the season

Brian Schnee

Equinox Staff

For the Keene State College field hockey team, the 2012 campaign has had its ups and downs, lefts and rights and back onto a straight track. Like other programs in the fall season, the Owls’ field hockey program has had a lot of change over from last year’s squad. After posting back-to-back victories against Western New England College and Springfield College to start the season, the Owls looked to be just as successful as previous years.

Last season the Owls finished with 20 wins and five losses including a flawless record in the Little East Conference. According to LEC sources, KSC has won eight LEC Championships since joining in 1998.

Emerging from the first two games of the season, Head Coach Amy Watson’s team began to struggle by dropping four of their next five games. However, Watson wasn’t phased by the losses due to the fact that they were all to very talented teams. During the early season skid, the Owls lost three of those games to teams ranked in the NCAA top 20 poll.

“Four of those losses were to NESCAC schools who always have powerful programs,” Watson said. “Our goal is to schedule non-conference games against teams with a reputation for being very talented.”

Senior back, Katie Foyle agreed with Watson about a tough early season schedule. “She [Watson] could schedule teams that we could easily beat but that would not help us.” Foyle said. “This way we have the right mind-set for the remainder of the season.”

Watson said that another reason for the early season demise is how the team is constantly hampered by short-term injuries to key players. “We’re just getting banged around a little bit but we are fortunate that we haven’t had any long-term injuries,” Watson said.

All negative factors aside, since their loss to Trinity College back on Sept. 20, the Owls lifted their wings and began to catch wind thus following up with an impressive seven and two record.

This included a six-game win streak which five of the six wins came against conference opponents. Currently, KSC is fighting at the top of the Little East Conference and will focus on an ever so meaningful showdown with fellow top-dog UMass-Dartmouth on Oct. 20th. Joining the Owls near the top of the LEC standings is Bridgewater State who KSC fell to on its third game of the season.

Bridgewater State topped the Owls by a final of 1-0 and it was this game that started the early season shortfall.

UMass-Dartmouth defeated Bridgewater on Saturday thus pushing the Owls to win out in-conference and defeat UMD to hold a possible three-way tie at the top of the Little East.

Foyle, a transfer from Thomas College in Maine, noted that the Owls will hold tight in conference play for the rest of the season however, the meeting with UMass-Dartmouth will certainly be a challenge. “It’s one of our goals at the beginning of the season, always beat Dartmouth,” Foyle said. “Dartmouth is great competition but we’re definitely looking to win that game.”

“We always match up well with Dartmouth,” Amy Watson said. “They play a similar style of hockey. The history the past few years has been they beat us and we beat them later in the tournament or vise-versa, we’ll see.”

In regards to the Owls’ roster as a whole, Foyle mentioned that she is very impressed with players coming off the bench. “Coach said she really wanted to see the depth of our team,” Foyle said.

Foyle added, “I was really impressed with everyone who came off the bench; everyone played hard and gave us good minutes.”

The Owls were bounced from the NCAA tournament in the second round last season by Bowdoin College. They look to get back to the tourney with an LEC championship.

“We’re in a sense rebuilding,” Amy Watson said. “We’ve only brought back three starters. This whole year has been a pretty good growing curve for us.”

The Owls are looking to stay strong down the final stretch and will next take the turf field at UMass-Dartmouth at 4 p.m. on Oct. 20th.

Brian Schnee can be contacted

at bschnee@keene-equinox.com