Coming off a 16-3 season that ended with a loss in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament, the field hockey team has begun its season with three strong victories.
The No. 4 Tigers (3-0 overall) have already defeated Bucknell, Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth and are looking forward to making another run at the program’s first national championship. Princeton will also look to take home the Ivy League title for the 16th time in the past 17 years.
“Ultimately we want to win, but the question we’ll ask at the end isn’t where we ranked but did we play our best,” head coach Kristen Holmes-Winn said. “If we strive every day and continue to attack every day, then I think we’ll be good enough to win a national championship.”
The team’s core starters have almost all returned, as only five members of last year’s squad graduated.
“We only lost two starters from last year’s team, so being able to train with basically our full team in the offseason was a big advantage,” All-America junior striker Kathleen Sharkey said. Sharkey put on a dominant display against Richmond on Friday, scoring a program-record six goals in a 7-1 victory.
The five freshmen who made up this year’s recruit class have been a tremendous asset to the team so far.
“The freshmen learned very quickly what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, so that allows us to not have to worry too much about blending because it’s happened naturally,” Holmes-Winn said.
“I feel like freshmen are usually intimidated at the beginning, but the freshmen are just stepping right in and acting like they’ve been on the team for years,” Sharkey added.
Some of the freshmen have been forced to step into big roles quickly, as the team has suffered several early injuries.
“Our team’s pretty small this season, so we’ve definitely struggled with [injuries] in preseason. But it’s given other people the opportunity to step up and rise to the occasion, so I think we’ve turned it into a positive,” Sharkey said.
With league play and other big games coming up, the team has been focused on being as sharp as possible.
“We’ve identified the things we need to work on, and I think as long as we keep to those goals we’ll have a lot of success the next couple weeks,” senior goalie Jennifer King said. King suffered a knee injury before the season began, but Holmes-Winn said she hopes to have her back in time for the matchup against Yale on Sept. 25.
“This season we’re really trying to take advantage of every single day and finish each practice as a better team than we were yesterday,” Sharkey added.
For the near future, that means being as ready as possible for Friday’s Ivy League opener against Dartmouth and the team’s faceoff against rival Syracuse at Class of 1952 Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Princeton has played the Orange in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament two years in a row, losing in 2008 but beating them 7-3 in last year’s bout.
Nevertheless, the team is looking inward and maintaining a consistent mindset for the season.
“We want to be consistently playing with our own mentality,” King said. “It’s really important to us that we don’t distinguish between opponents. We have to play with our own structure and a sense of Tiger pride.”
“We prepare the same way against every team, so it doesn’t matter who we’re playing. Our mentality is always the same,” Holmes-Winn said.
One area the Tigers have been making an effort to improve in is penalty corner executions. Princeton ranked No. 5 in the nation with 9.74 penalties per game last season, yet often failed to capitalize on the opportunities.
“Last year we were one of the top teams in the nation to earn corners, but our execution rate wasn’t really high at all, so we’re trying to focus on building it into practice,” Sharkey said.
With all but two of the squad’s starters returning and a strong new group of freshmen, however, the Tigers have no doubts about their ambitions.
“Last season our whole theme was to get to the Final Four ... but this season the focus is completely on going all the way to the national championship,” Sharkey said.
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