The TopOfTheCircle.com Fourth Law of Field Hockey holds that players can win and lose games on the pitch, but games can so often be lost by the decisions that coaches make in picking their teams.
You want an example of this? Look at what happened to the U.S. women’s national side in this FIH Nations Cup campaign, falling short of winning this eight-nations tournament and failing to qualify for the FIH Pro League. To be sure, the U.S. field hockey program, fresh off an Olympic appearance, needed to evolve and add players from its high-performance pool in order to improve from its ninth-place finish in Paris.
However, the depth and quality of the players left home for the FIH Nations Cup tournament could have fielded a strong side. The fact that U.S. captain Ashley Hoffman was not selected was, to me, puzzling from a leadership standpoint. She is a fine player, but has so many intangibles that cannot be quantified on a selector’s clipboard.
On attack, many will question the non-selection of the likes of Ashley Sessa, Abby Tamer, Olivia Bent-Cole, Ryleigh Heck, and Erin Matson on the attack line. In the goal cage, the clear frontrunner was Kelsey Bing, but she was not rostered, either. Kealsie Reeb did a competent job in pool play, but head coach David Passmore pivoted to Jenny Rizzo, the lone U.S. goalie from the Women’s Hockey India League,
There was quality, for sure, on show for the U.S. team in this tournament. Maddie Zimmer scored three goals for the States, and there were promising performances up top from Katie Dixon and Mia Schoenbeck, and there were some near-misses from the 16-year-old Reese D’Ariano.
A lot of people are going to point fingers in the next few months leading to FIH World Cup qualifying. How was this team chosen, and why? To be sure, there needs to be real criticism and real talk about the direction this U.S. team is going.
Sure, you can argue that the U.S. may not have wanted to prepare for the 2028 Olympics through membership in the Pro League, which requires a high level of time, training, and travel.
After all, when you look at the lifetime record of the American women in the FIH Pro League, it is not pretty. In 75 games, the States’ win percentage was 9.33 percent.
Sure, the States are going to get the proverbial “mulligan” as hosts of the next Olympics, and won’t have to play qualifying matches to get in.
But if the selections for this year’s Nations Cup represented a vision of what the 2028 team is going to look like, I’m not so sure about the clairty of that vision.