Shen shuts out Niskayuna, 4-0
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. >> The fall sports season is the shortest of the high school sports year and things move quickly, but for the Shenendehowa field hockey team, making a move back to basics has helped the Plainsmen move ahead.
Showing patience and looking for each other more often, Shenendehowa shut out Niskayuna, 4-0, Friday night prior to its football homecoming game and had smiles up and down the turf at Brent T. Steuerwald Stadium.
“We’re really working on trying to pass to each other and use each other,” Shenendehowa coach Jeanne Frevola said. “We had a lot of individual efforts for a couple weeks there and we need to go back to what we were doing in the beginning before we got comfortable with each other.”
Shenendehowa’s Rachel Sterle was again a force, scoring a pair of goals and assisting on another Friday afternoon.
“She hustles non-stop and with the speed she also getting better field awareness as she matures through the season,” Frevola said. “I think she’s starting to use her team-
mates more, which in turn opens her up for the next explosion.
“She passes it flat and the next explosion of power up the field and on the move, if she can get a hold of a drive, she can hit the drive on the move and she’s deadly.”
Like a quarterback learning the tendencies of his receiving corps, Sterle has done the same with her teammates on the wings.
“Through the season we didn’t really know each other that well, until we bonded we started making those connections between each other which made it easier to pass to one another and to talk on the field,” Rachel Sterle said. “It’s knowing the pace of the ball, so you have to know their speed and their skill and what they can do to get the ball and take it.”
Plainsmen midfielder Olivia Howard again delivered, scoring a goal Friday along with powering her way up and down the turf against the Niskayuna defense.
“As I’ve grown in the game it’s definitely something I’ve developed and learned is that you kind of have to really be like a force,” Olivia Howard said. “You have to cut around girls, you have to make moves because just having good stick skills isn’t going to cut it at this level, you really have to know where your girls are and how to get around them.”
She too has noticed the change in the Plainsmen offensive sets.
“Going back to our Columbia game and really focusing on our passing and making sure we make those connections was really important and using it against Niskayuna really set a good standard,” Howard said. “We kind of proved that we can use each other and we’re all really good players, but using each other is going to make us go really far.”
Shenendehowa will face rival Saratoga Springs Wednesday afternoon at the Adirondack Sports Dome in Suburban Council action.