I don’t really have a ton of use for all women’s sports; I’m not gonna lie.

Field hockey, as hard as it must be, makes no sense to me. How am I supposed to enjoy a sport in which the competitors constantly hunch over and it’s against the rules to bring the stick over knee length, or whatever the ridiculous rule states? Plus, the BU women play over at M.I.T. I’m a lot of things (hell, by the end of this column, you may have a lot of great things you want to call me), but motivated to go to Cambridge and try to learn more about a sport I don’t get is not one of those things.

Women’s lacrosse is missing the action of men’s lacrosse, especially the hitting. I’ve had one friend who played high level high school lacrosse tell me she ached to be able to hit like the guys did. Add that to the constant waiting around for something to happen, and women’s lacrosse just has too many constrictive rules for me to enjoy.

Women’s basketball suffers from a lack of athleticism compared to its male counterpart, which, I know, is well-covered territory, but it affects the watchability for a chauvinistic viewer like myself. There are few women’s ballers I truly enjoy watching. Lucky for me, one of those players senior star Katie Terhune frequents ‘The Roof.’ But overall, if I really wanted to see a full-court break punctuated by a fundamentally sound layup, I’d pop in an old tape of me in my glory days (a.k.a. sixth grade).

But all is not lost to me ladies, for there is one women’s sport that I love that just could be my gateway drug of acceptance.

I love BU women’s soccer.

I guess it starts at the top. Nancy Feldman is right up there with Jack Parker in my eyes when I think of great BU coaches. She gets the best out of her teams, and is fantastic to the student media, whether her team has just destroyed an opponent or even if it has just lost its final game of the season.

I also had the distinct pleasure of covering the best woman athlete to come through BU since I’ve been here, Deidre Enos. Enos flat out had wheels, and her touch around goal has been missed since the day she shed the scarlet jersey for the last time. Enos scored 20 goals in that campaign, and finished her career as the all time BU points leader with 121 (51 goals), 50 points more than the next highest scorer.

Only Melissa Shulman, the redshirt sophomore striker who missed last year with injury, has been close to being a consistent scorer since Enos’ departure for the WUSA’s inaugural season. BU’s tough season last year had a lot to do with the team’s lack of a scorer who could fill in for Shulman.

Besides being wowed by the skill of players such as Rebecca Beyer, Katie Smurthwaite (not appearing in the 2003 edition), Teresa Petruccelli and Megan Cross (one of the best defenders to ever play for the Terriers), I’ve enjoyed the team’s personalities, none more than last year’s senior captain, Allison Merkle.

Most athletes, female or male, are extremely focused at the Division I level. Rarely do observers see true joy on the fields, rinks and courts of big time athletics.

I don’t think I went to a single BU game where I didn’t see Allison Merkle laughing on the field at some point.

And that says nothing to her competitiveness. Merkle was intensity in 10 cities, someone who had the skill to go around defenders and then the willingness to plow through a midfielder in order to win a ball. She just had the ability to laugh it off if she took the best of a hit, or, in the likelier situation, she gave more of it.

Shulman seems to fit into that Merkle role now, despite the positional difference. Intensely competitive but still able to have a good time, she’s just as likely to be committing a foul trying to win the ball as she is to be knocking one in (luckily for BU, the latter happens more frequently).

After last night’s 5-0 drubbing of UMass, BU looks ready to compete for a conference crown again, and, perhaps more importantly, it looks like it could be another fun season, as the quintuple spot gives BU more than a quarter of the tallies it had last season. A little more excitement won’t hurt.

Just a little more excitement is all I ask. I don’t want to be a sports chauvinist, honestly. It’s just turned out that way. Maybe one of the field hockey girls could go P.J. Stock on an America East rival. Maybe someone on the women’s lacrosse team could lay out an opponent a la Jim Brown (yes, that Jim Brown). And when Terhune throws down over some helpless Vermont two-guard, I’ll gladly convert.

Until then, you’ll find me following Feldman’s crew. I won’t be in Cambridge … or Nickerson Field in the spring.

Nick Cardamone, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly sports columnist for The Daily Free Press.