The last weekend of the field hockey season has arrived and the top four teams in Div. III will be battling for a national title.
Three of last year's Final Four will be returning, with Salisbury University replacing 2008 champion Bowdoin to join Messiah College, Ursinus and Tufts in pursuit of the title. The Jumbos, currently seeded No. 4 in the tournament, will take on the second-seeded Salisbury Sea Gulls on Saturday in South Hadley, Mass. as the underdog. But with matching 16-1 records, no common opponents this season and their last meeting in 2007 featuring a very different Tufts team, it's anybody's game.
"Two years have changed a lot," senior forward Michelle Kelly said. "They are a traditionally strong program, but we're building up ours consistently and it should just be a really good game."
Salisbury's history is marked by success on the national level. The Sea Gulls boast four national championship titles, with three coming consecutively in 2003, 2004 and 2005. This year marks the team's 12th trip to the semifinals in 27 tournament appearances. Known for speed and a quick, southern style of play, the Sea Gulls will potentially give the Tufts defense its biggest test yet.
"We're focusing on coming out strong because we can't have a lapse at all," said senior co-captain Margi Scholtes, who was recently named National Field Hockey Coaches Association New England West Region Player of the Year. "When we played them two years ago we didn't come out right away and they scored on us fast. We're trying to slow down the play, delay the forwards and stop the play completely if need be."
The Jumbos now boast semifinal experience of their own — arguably on a more valuable level than Salisbury, as Tufts was on this stage just last season. And with the Jumbos' Final Four debut last year ending with the Jumbos as the national runners-up, the drive to avenge a championship loss is still fresh in their minds.
"I think that our experience will help us just as much because almost our entire team has played in an NCAA game before," Scholtes said. "We know we deserve to be there and we know what we want to do. We're ready to go."
"I think our recent experience is definitely an advantage because Salisbury hasn't been there in two years," Kelly added.
Two other advantages could tip the scales in Tufts' favor this weekend. First, the Jumbos have recorded a 16-1 record in a more difficult conference and region than the one Salisbury plays in. No other teams received a bid into the tournament from the Capital Athletic Conference, while the NESCAC earned four of the 24 spots.
Second, the championship is to be played on field turf — a thicker, slower surface that Tufts plays on — rather than Astroturf, on which all the other remaining teams play at home.
"The fact that we play[ed] on field turf our whole season and that the tournament is on field turf is an advantage against their speed," first-year starting midfielder Rachel Gerhardt said. "We've all been clicking from the forwards to the midfield to the backs so we're just going to keep doing what we have been doing all year. And, you know, we're a very fast team, too, so we're just excited to get out there and fight it out."
Another possible outcome to the even matchup this weekend is overtime. An overtime match has the potential to be emotionally, mentally and physically draining for the Tufts squad, and with its only extended-time matchup ending in a loss to Trinity, Tufts has been specifically preparing for the potential extra minutes.
"We obviously have been working on seven-vs.-seven overtime but we don't want to have to use it," Scholtes said. "We want to finish the game in 70 minutes."
A regulation win on Saturday would put the Jumbos in prime shape for the championship game on Sunday against either No. 1 Messiah or No. 3 Ursinus, with Messiah boasting the only undefeated record in the tournament and Ursinus holding the 2006 national title.
"We're focusing on rest a lot because we've talked a lot about the fact that we have all the skills we built up all season so we're putting our focus on our mental game a lot," Kelly said. "I don't think we played our best games this past weekend and I think it says a lot that we can do that and still get the win. So hopefully this weekend that's all been corrected and we'll just click like we can."
It seems mentality, fitness and maybe a little bit of luck will be what wins this game for either team, as the Jumbos and Sea Gulls boast almost identical statistics. The Jumbos have posted 78 goals while Salisbury has recorded 80, and both teams allowed 11. Tufts has racked up 243 penalty corners and given up 76, while Salisbury has had 254 and given up 85. Tufts' leading scorer, junior Tamara Brown, has 21 goals and 13 assists, while Salisbury's leading scorer, senior Lauren Correll, has an almost-identical 20 goals and 8 assists.
"I think everyone is expecting Saturday to be a really difficult game and obviously Sunday will be hard as well," Gerhardt says. "But we have a lot of depth on our team with everyone in great shape. I just feel like if someone is tired or even if we're all tired it won't even matter because we want to walk off that field and know we did everything we possibly could.
"This is the weekend we've all been working for all summer and all fall," she continued, "This is what everyone has been waiting for: these games right now."
