Christine Brennan
Field hockey squad deserves attention
The columnist writes about the surprising unbeaten women’s field hockey team and what its success means,
The relationship between U.S. women’s team sports and the Summer Olympic Games has never been better. Just about everyone is winning, all the time: basketball, soccer and water polo. Rowing 8’s and volleyball. Beach volleyball and field hockey. Field hockey? You’re forgiven if you weren’t sure the USA had an Olympic women’s field hockey team. On its website, USA Field Hockey calls its 2016 Olympic team “The Best USA Team You’ve Never Heard Of.” Its emails use the iconic initials “USWNT,” which can be confusing because that’s what the women’s soccer team is famously called online.
But this is a U.S. Women’s National Team too, and it happens to have a better record at these Olympics than that other USWNT.
After a last-place finish in London in 2012, the U.S. field hockey team is making the kind of Olympic run that we’ve come to expect from the U.S. women’s basketball and soccer teams.
It has played four games in Rio, and won all four, including an impressive 3-0 victory against India on Thursday night on the Boise State-blue artificial turf at the Deodoro sports complex.
Katie O’Donnell Bam, a standout at the University of Maryland several years ago and the team’s leading scorer in Rio, scored the first two goals of the evening for the Americans.
With one more pool game left to be played against Britain on Saturday, the U.S. team already has qualified for the quarterfinals, where, if things go well, it could win the nation’s first Olympic field hockey medal since the 1984 Los Angeles Games, when the home team won bronze.
The fifth-ranked Americans have put together an impressive run in these Games. They started Olympic play with a 2-1 upset of second-ranked Argentina, then defeated third-ranked Australia 2-1, before pummeling 10thranked Japan 6-1.
This is a surprise to everyone but the team itself.
“It’s something we’ve known for a while,” team captain Lauren Crandall, who played collegiately at Wake Forest, said Thursday evening. “We’re excited people are entertained by our play. When we go places, we have a very fast style of play. We hope the fans are entertained by it.”
Something very interesting is happening in the wonderfully named Spooky Nook, the U.S. national team’s training headquarters in Lancaster, Pa. Under the leadership of head coach Craig Parnham, who took over after London in 2013, the Americans have been working toward this moment with a strong sense of purpose and national pride.
“I’m not sure it’s been all of a sudden,” he said. “It’s been 31⁄ years of hard work. These guys have been working very hard. I’m pleased for the team. I’m pleased for U.S. hockey. Things are mov- ing along nicely.”
Nine members of the team played on the 2012 team, and three were in both Beijing and London. So they’re veterans, but they believe they are part of something new.
“We’ve been defining a culture and developing a family,” Crandall said. “The work we have done three years ago has led to who we want to be, what we want to project. That’s what’s defined us as a team. We put in the work.”
Crandall had some choice words for the team: “Gritty, persistent, perserverent, family — we’re very family oriented and together.”
And her message to a nation that is just starting to tune in?
“Watch, just watch us. I think a lot of people sometimes think about middle school and high school field hockey and they get turned off, they don’t know the rules, there are so many whistles.
“But the international game with all the rules changes is so much faster, it’s so much different than people may remember. So just watch. Don’t worry about what the rules are, and be entertained.”