Slippery Rock University’s women’s field hockey team began play for the Fall 2018 season on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2018, against St. Thomas Aquinas College in Springfield, MA at Abdow Field.
Victorious The Rock was by a score of six to one against the Lady Spartans. The Lady Spartans, who hail from Sparkhill, New York, came into the game with a one win one loss record.
Sophomore forward Courtney Page started the game off right away with a goal which put The Rock up one to zero. Sophomore and 2017 Synapse All-American Kayla Ulrich had an assist on the play. In a preseason interview prior to the day’s game, coach Julie Swiney mentioned the stand out season last year Ulrich turned in last year and does not expect Ulrich to carry the team’s attack this season. That assist by Ulrich ended up as one of two of her assists for the game.
“We focus on a team attack a team defense. She is certainly a part of that,” Swiney said days before the game. This year is Swiney’s ninth as head coach of the team.
The Rock would cruise through the Lady Spartans during the game’s first half by leading five to one by halftime. Junior midfielder Briannah Thorm, who hails from Napier, New Zealand, scored the lone goal for the Lady Spartans.
The game would remain five to one until The Rock scored the game’s final tally within the last minute. The last time The Rock scored six goals in a game came in 2015 against Mansfield.
Most notable during the game was that forward Lauren Marks and forward Jessie Trube, both freshmen, scored two goals a piece. This marked the first time in the past decade two freshmen for the Green and White scored two goals in the same contest. Marks and Trube belong to a freshman class of ten freshmen.
“We do have ten freshmen which is a large group to accumulate quickly,” Swiney said. “So far they are doing a great job adopting the concepts. I think there’s a few who can contribute right away.”
Notable disparity in team totals for the teams included SRU’s 17 shots to St. Thomas Aquinas’s five.
New assistant coach named Missy Revesz. Revesz, a former division one field hockey player at Kent State University, entered her first game on Swiney’s staff. Revesz joined The Rock after stints with the College of Wooster and Oberlin College. Revesz’s time spent with the College of Wooster was under coach Brenda Meese. Meese is the seventh coach in women’s field hockey history to reach over 400 career wins.
“Missy’s been an awesome addition to the team,” Swiney said. “She has a lot of great experience being a division one athlete. She has a lot of new ideas and concepts we’ve been introducing into our attack.” Swiney also cited Revesz’s coming to the team in January as advantageous to creating camaraderie with the players.
Swiney cited in that preseason interview mentioned earlier her goal of getting back to the playoffs which she hopes to achieve by using the non-conference games as preparation for the conference games.
On Monday, Sept. 3, SRU will take on the American International College Yellow Jackets in Springfield, MA. The Yellow Jackets have zero wins and one loss.
