After five straight road games, the Boston University field hockey team is looking forward to settling back in at Jack Barry Field. Unfortunately for the Terriers, by the time they have the chance to appreciate being home again, they’ll be on the road again.
On Saturday, the No. 20 Terriers (6-3) kick off their America East season with a home game against the University of New Hampshire (37). Just 25 hours later, the team will be in Connecticut facing Yale University (2-6).
“This season, we’ve been stressing the need to take it one game at a time,” said BU coach Sally Starr. “We need to approach each game as an entity in itself. So we’ll play Saturday and then put it behind us and get ready to play again.”
After going a perfect 6-0 in conference play last season, the Terriers were unanimously picked to repeat as conference champions in the America East preseason coaches poll. In previous years, Northeastern University proved to be the Terriers’ biggest opposition, but with the Huskies leaving America East for the Colonial Athletic Association this season, the road to the top will be a little smoother for BU. Still, Starr said she is not taking anything for granted.
“Every game is a new game,” she said. “There’s a saying that we use that says ‘field hockey is a game of inches,’ and then those inches can be a great equalizer. We need to respect all of our opponents, because if we don’t, we will be in big trouble.”
In this same preseason poll, the Wildcats – BU’s Saturday opponent – were picked to finish third. But the 2005 version of this team shows little resemblance to last year’s 4-16 team. The team has nine freshmen on the roster, and sophomore goalie Margaux Shute, after starting six games in the cage last season, leads the way.
“UNH is a really young and really athletic team,” Starr said. “I’m sure that they are going to come out and play with a lot of emotion and energy. They have an excellent attacking game and a lot of speed. We’re going to have to prepare for that.”
The Terriers will counter with their own Shute. Sarah Shute, one of the team’s starting midfielders, leads the team with 13 points on five goals and three assists. Shute scored the winning goal as rookie in last year’s 2-1 win over the Wildcats.
BU has another aggressive rookie this season in midfielder Holly Wiles, who ties Shute’s five scores. After scoring two game-winning overtime goals, Wiles was named the America East Rookie of the Week.Another freshman making waves for the Terriers is Lizzie Perreault. The midfielder/back scored her first collegiate goal in last Saturday’s 5-0 win over Fairfield University and followed it up with a second goal just a few minutes later.
Starr credits the success of her rookie players to good recruiting.
“We’ve been very lucky in getting people who are not only very athletic, but smart hockey players,” she said. “We had several freshmen last year who didn’t start, but could have. This year, we have more talented freshmen, not just Lizzie and Holly, but all of them. Our recruiting has given us some talented players who get to college and are ready to play.”
The Terriers have not played on their home field since Sept. 10, when they beat Hofstra University, 3-2. Since then, BU went 4-1 on its five-game stretch, its only loss coming to then-No. 13 Northeastern in a 3-2 overtime contest.
Yale is 1-3 at home this season. On Wednesday, goalie Elizabeth Friedlander held No. 18 University of Connecticut to one goal, but Yale was shutout as UConn handed the Bulldogs their sixth loss in seven games.
“After Saturday’s game, we need to make sure we’re physically and mentally rested, just like we did when we had to play Hofstra University and Quinnipiac University the same weekend,” Starr said. “When we get on that bus on Sunday, we’ll be ready to come out and play hard.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
