The Syracuse field hockey team and its opponents over the weekend – Providence and Dartmouth – often found themselves looking toward the sky because of balls hit into the air.

Dartmouth learned the hard way just how much the ball can hurt, especially during harsh weather conditions. At the 27:04 mark in the first half Sunday, a high ball struck Dartmouth’s Ashley Choren in the forehead. Blood gushed out of her head, and, immediately, Choren needed a towel to stop the bleeding from the jagged cut. She was later taken to the hospital for stitches.

‘It was a big, bloody mess on top of her head,’ Dartmouth head coach Amy Fowl said.

‘It was unlucky. It was a great, hard hit but it happened to be a deflection and she was just beyond it. It’s part of the game.’

In SU’s 1-0 victory over the Friars and its 3-1 loss to the Big Green, the referees didn’t blow their whistles on numerous strokes that could be deemed as dangerously hit -usually balls hit above the waist and in danger of hitting a player.

Before she was hit, Choren scored just 56 seconds into the game. Seven minutes later, she was struck with the ball.

SU is used to the different criteria certain referees hold for dangerously hit balls. Throughout the 2004 campaign, the Orange has had to adjust game-by-game to the referee’s standards.

‘It’s the way these officials call it, or don’t call it, as this case would be,’ SU head coach Kathleen Parker said last week. ‘You just have to play the way the officials call it. We went right from that official last Friday (Oct. 8) to a couple women on Sunday (Oct. 10) at Lafayette who called everything. Anything that was an inch off the ground they called it dangerous.’

Providence and Dartmouth often hit potentially dangerous balls to clear the ball out of their own defensive zone, making Syracuse play more conservatively.

After a typically mild fall season, Providence and Dartmouth were the first teams to get a glimpse of what the Syracuse area had to offer this weekend – rain, wind and even some snow flurries. The unfavorable conditions made the field damp and slick, hardened the ball and made sticks rattle when struck.

‘Both teams were sliding around but everyone seemed to be OK toward the end of the first half,’ Fowl said. ‘The adjustments for this kind of weather are more of a gut thing. You just have to gut it out because it’s so cold. You can’t feel your hands and it’s hard to execute your skills so you basically have to have the mental toughness to deal with it.’

Dartmouth’s victory on Sunday was its second win against SU in six meetings. … The Orange will have very little time to dwell on the loss. SU’s next game isn’t until Friday, but the matchup will be against Connecticut, the undefeated leader in the Big East standings at 3-0. UConn has recorded 10 shutouts and has allowed only seven goals all season.

Published on October 17, 2004 at 12:00 pm