It’s something far subtler than the 6-1 thumping her team absorbed this weekend, and something far more innocuous than the 0-3 start that’s suddenly invaded her team’s season.

But itsy bitsy as it may be, a minor rule change has given Syracuse field hockey coach Kathleen Parker some optimism that, if her players can adapt to it, they might not so easily get washed out.

During the offseason, field hockey officials eliminated one restriction that limits the effectiveness of penalty corners – a close-range offensive chance that’s vaguely analogous to corner kicks in soccer.

Over the first two weeks of the field hockey season, most Division I teams are scoring more than ever. Problem is, the Orangewomen aren’t one of them. The team dropped games in Durham, N.H., on Friday and Saturday. Considering the optimism with which SU opened the season, the recent losses to New Hampshire, 4-2, and Iowa, 6-1, were disappointing and more disappointing, respectively.

And that’s where this new rule change comes in.

‘We obviously aren’t taking advantage of it,’ Parker said, ‘but I think other schools are.’

So in other words, Parker has targeted an obvious place for improvement.

In previous years, penalty corners would begin with a low pass to the top of the circle surrounding the net. There, one player (called the stick-stopper) would have to cradle the rolling pass to a complete halt before another player could strike the ball into the net.

No longer must the pass stop completely – the penalty corner is now a de facto one-timer. And as a result, goals come a lot more easily.

‘What we’re seeing,’ Parker said, ‘is shots that are getting off faster, which means the defense has less time to get out and break it up.’

Including the weekend losses and a 1-0 season-opener defeat against Kent State, the Orangewomen have scored just three goals all year. But they’ve surrendered 11, a figure far closer to the national average. Among the games played on Sunday, for example, 13 of the 23 Division I games featured one team that scored five goals or more.

‘I looked at other hockey scores [yesterday] morning when I came in,’ Parker said, ‘and the scores are high. Really high. I mean, Iowa beat New Hampshire 9-1. Duke beat James Madison 9-0, and they’re traditionally a top-10 or top-15 team.’

Hoping to improve her team’s execution of penalty corners, Parker elected to change her long-standing routine. In other years and for the beginning of this season, she’d force those select players involved in penalty corners to stay at the end of practice, and together, they’d work on Coyne Field as their teammates headed to the showers or the weight room.

On Thursday, Parker decided that would change just like the rule to which her team is trying to adjust.

No longer would penalty corners be relegated to the end of practice. From now on, SU will work on its corners at the start of practice – when bodies are fresher and focus is stronger.

‘Last year it was just at the end, a couple minutes at the end of practice,’ junior Lindsay Peirson said. ‘And you know, we’d like to capitalize on [the penalty corners], because it seems like everyone else is.’

Of course, the Orangewomen still need more practice. Senior Ann-Marie Guglieri, the now-obsolete stick-stopper, is still working on a method for best controlling the ball without stopping it.

‘It’s taken a lot of missed balls to learn,’ she said. ‘I’m not perfect at it yet. I think we’re still adapting.’

Notes

The Orangewomen play next on Wednesday night, a game with Albany that marks their first home contest of the season. Of the three teams SU played during its road trip, all were formidable opponents, Parker said.

‘We could have played a schedule where we were playing Oshkosh U. and Shanghai Tech,’ she said.

‘We would like to get back on the winning track, and we would like to start that this week. That’s obviously our purpose. Now, Albany has other ideas in mind.’

Published on September 8, 2003 at 12:00 pm