Field hockey adopts ‘Terrier’ mentality against Pacific

The motto this year for the Boston University field hockey team is “play like a terrier.” That’s what BU coach Sally Starr said after her team’s victory over the University of the Pacific.

“[It’s playing] smart, it’s tenacious, it’s intelligent, it’s loyal, it’s with a tail wagging cause you’re loving to play the game,” she said. “When you’re playing like a terrier, you’re going after them, you’re winning the 50-50 balls, you’re playing smart, you’re playing aggressive, you’re next step thinking, you’re being alert, your ears are up.”

Starr said that was necessarily the case for her Terriers Sunday afternoon, when BU (2-2) took the field against the Tigers (2-3) at New Balance Field. The Terriers won the game in a 1-0 fashion, but not convincingly enough that Starr felt comfortable with their performance.

“I just think this game was a lot more of a struggle than it needed to be,” Starr said. “I really felt that we didn’t play the type of hockey that we’re capable of playing. We really played reactive hockey in the first half, and then in the second half, we were just on our heels a whole lot.”

BU tallied 19 shots — a season high — to Pacific’s eight, with three players responsible for the brunt of them. Sophomore forward Amanda Cassera and sophomore midfielder Hester van der Laan were both responsible for five attempts while junior midfielder Sofi Laurito notched seven. With 43 shot attempts on the year, Sunday’s total accounts for about 44 percent of what BU has managed to generate, even though it was only able to get one goal out of it.

Despite what looks like a barrage of offense on paper, the Terriers were only able to convert on one attempt off a penalty corner, one of 10 total chances they had with that advantage.

“We did a good job drawing corners,” Starr said. “We executed one corner outstandingly, but the rest…So we need to look at that, why we’re not able to get better goal scoring situations off of our corners, but one positive of this game is that we did get corners, that was good.”

Between corners and shot volume, it’s no doubt the openings are there for BU and that the offense is doing its job in generating chances for the Terriers. The biggest issue now is capitalizing on those chances and putting the ball in the back of the net.

To Pacific’s credit, goalkeeper Laura Pujade had nine saves on the day, two of which were spectacular diving stops to keep the Terriers at bay, but Starr still said BU should have been able to leave more of a mark in the goal column.

“We need to make adjustments,” Starr said. “We need to read what’s happening on the field to be able to do the type of things that we’re capable of doing.

“[In] the first half, I felt like we were over-dribbling, and even in the second half a little bit, we were dribbling a lot into 1-on-3s as opposed to getting a ball, passing early, moving it and really making them play chase a little bit.”

Starr noted that Pacific put the team under a lot of pressure today, but the Terriers need to stay calm, work hard and play smart, something another motto of theirs touches on.

“They worked hard,” she said. “The girls absolutely [worked hard]. We have a saying right now: ‘Play with your heart, but bring your head with it,’ so right now, in games like this, we’re playing hard, we’re playing with our heart, but we’re not bringing our head with it, so that’s something that we got to be better at.”