The Rocket

Issue date: 1/23/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Steve Reed Rocket assistant sports editor and senior Nicolas Lewis completes a pass to senior forward Jen Venet to finish a drill during the final field hockey practice of the season. [Click to enlarge]

When I first started writing for The Rocket at the beginning of this school year, I was afforded the opportunity to take my choice of which sport I would like to cover on a regular basis.

I chose to cover field hockey, and I did so for two reasons.

I was eager to tackle the challenge of writing about a sport I knew next to nothing about, but also the opportunity presented by covering a team that hadn't had success in recent years.

I enjoyed spending the season covering the team, seeing what it was like to follow a group of young women that played not in front of large crowds or for the hopes of a career beyond college, but because they love the game.

Getting to know the players and coaches and how much they cared about their sport and their team, even on the days when nothing seemed to go right, was pretty inspiring.

When the opportunity then arose to write a column about practicing with a sports team, I jumped at it, because it seemed to me that practicing with the field hockey team was the idea of being a fish out of water.

To say a unique experience awaited me was a bit of an understatement.

I had watched games for the bulk of two months and struggled until the last game to wrap my brain around exactly what was going on, so the smallest thoughts I had of knowing what I was getting into were likely to be incorrect.

When the final practice of the season rolled around, I headed up to N. Kerr Thompson Stadium both expecting the worst and hoping for the best.

I certainly didn't help matters off to a good start by wearing shorts on a chilly evening made worse by the usual biting winds that come to the Slippery Rock campus.

Continued...

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