The St. Joe’s field hockey team faces new expectations as they enter the 2019 campaign ranked No. 17 in the nation. These expectations are the result of their recent string of success which includes two consecutive Atlantic 10 Championships and appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Senior goalkeeper Victoria Kammerinke explains how she tries to spin the idea of everyone gunning for St. Joe’s as a positive.
“I think there are two ways to look at it, you can see it as a target on our back or you could enjoy the pressure in a positive way,” Kammerinke said. “Seeing [a target on your back] as a threat is something else that is going to push us to repeat that again.”
St. Joe’s returns key members from last year’s team such as four Hawks who were voted onto the 2019 Atlantic 10 Field Hockey Preseason Poll, sophomore forward Tonya Botherway and seniors midfielder Pepe Serrano, midfielder/back Kathrin Bentz and goalkeeper Victoria Kammerinke. Junior forward Jordan Olenginski said along with new expectations, the team also realizes they need to improve from last year.
“Our main goal is to come out strong,” Olenginski said. “Keep that high intensity and control the tempo for the whole game.”
Senior midfielder Kathrin Bentz said the team has worked on being resilient.
“One thing we have worked on is recovering in the moment,” Bentz said. “If we have a set back we do not want to stay down but to push right back, we talk about resilience a lot. Being able to get right up after we were scored on for example.”
Resiliency comes from a strong team chemistry which Olenginski states is possibly due to only graduating three players in the past two years.
“It helps keeping the same amount of girls together because we know each other very well off the field,” Olenginski said. “Off the field translates to on the field, so when we know each other better on the field like where we want the ball and that has helped.”
They have left off right where they finished last season, as St. Joe’s has won their first two games against Hofstra University and Drexel University.The Hawks have six ranked opponents on the schedule this season but Kammerinke said they are focused on their conference regular season right now.
“We really worked on getting everyone on the same page and going from there,” Kammerinke said. “Expectations are high, obviously to exceed the goals of last season. Our first focus will be the regular season, and then toward A-10s and then winning A-10s.”
Even though the Hawks are set to face a tougher schedule than last season, they will remain true to the system put in place by Farquhar.
“One thing coach Lynn has done very well is teaching us the basics and sticking to the basics,” Bentz said. “Our whole game is grounded in basic skills. We say we want to have two seconds on the ball and have two options and that makes it very easy. Everything is made up of those principles and that is what makes our play work.”
