Three NCAA divisions will be having their semifinals later in the week. But there is one eye-opening difference in the bracketing this year. This year’s Division I national semfinals has two teams from the Atlantic 10 Conference, a group which has never won an NCAA title.
In the last few years, the eightysometing Division I field hockey teams have seemingly created an oligopoly of two superconferences, the Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference. Both conferences this year have added schools to expand their footprints from coast to coast. However, the field hockey competition involving Big Ten schools has not yet expanded to include new West Coast members like Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA.
The excellence of the ACC and Big Ten is obvious: since 1986, a team from one or the other conference has won the national title 26 times.
What’s going on here?
As with many things in the field hockey world, it’s complicated. I think a great amount of this comes from coaching. And it’s not just the coaching of the current person in charge, but the formative work done by previous staffs.
Hannah Prince, for example, is in her third season of coaching at St. Joseph’s University. She is benefitting from some of the groundwork done when Lynn Farquhar was the coach between 2014 and 2021. Prince has done a fine job in assembling a team with American recruits, foreign talent, and athletes from the transfer portal. The Hawks’ leading scorer this year is Lily Santi, a player from one of the finest American scholastic programs, West Long Branch Shore Regional (N.J.).
Up in Amherst, Mass., Barb Weinberg has been spot-on in putting together her program as well as her roster. The legacy of the program has been laid chiefly by former U.S. women’s national team coach Pam Hixon, who coached the Minutewomen for 18 seasons. Weinberg has also put together a diverse group of players who work well together, led by Claire Danahy, who played her scholastic field hockey at Chelmsford (Mass.).
Now, I know you’re not the only person in the field hockey world not to have UMass or St. Joe’s on your Division I bingo card. But that’s the reason for the TopOfTheCircle.com First Law of Field Hockey, which holds that games aren’t played on paper.
It should be an interesting tournament, to say the least.