Blue White Illustrated

| VARSITY VIEWS T his past May, the Penn State :eld hockey team headed to the Nether- lands for one of those o;-season in- ternational trips that American college sports teams occasionally embark upon. The Dutch love their :eld hockey – their national team brought home the sil- ver medal at the Olympics last month – but the Nittany Lions' trip was intended not just to test players' mettle against European club competition or to :ll up their Instagram accounts with photos of Amsterdam and The Hague, but to enhance their camaraderie. The Lions visited :ve cities in nine days, and at each hotel they checked into, the coaching sta; would change the roommate assignments so that players would get to know each other better. By that measure, and quite a few others, the trip was a big success. "I think our trip to Holland was really a great team-building experience," senior forward Brooke Birosik said. "It really brought us together o; the :eld, [and] I think that's really showing on the :eld this year." It certainly is. Heading into their Big Ten opener, the Lions were 6-0, their best start since 2002, and had skyrocketed from 18th in the preseason coaches' poll to fourth. The reason for that enormous jump: vic- tories over three ranked opponents. The Lions defeated No. 20 Old Dominion, 6-2, and No. 5 Virginia, 2-0, at the Penn State Field Hockey Complex in the :rst weekend of the regular season, then shut down No. 9 Albany, 3-1, in a neutral-site game in Easton, Pa., on Sept. 4. One of the keys to Penn State's success has been a balanced o;ense that was av- eraging 5.5 goals per game through six games. The Nittany Lions were leading the country in scoring with three play- ers – Birosik, sophomore mid:elder Gini Bramley and junior forward Shay Can- non – ranked among the top 30 scorers in the country. The Lions have also been solid defen- sively, with sophomore goalkeeper Jenny Rizzo allowing only 1.09 goals per game to rank eighth in the country. Rizzo has "probably been the most improved player on the :eld," coach Charlene Morett- Curtiss said, citing the experience she gained at the Junior Pan Am Games. When Penn State played host to Lock Haven on Sept. 11, Rizzo gave up only one goal to a team that was averaging eight per game, helping the Lions maintain their perfect record with a 4-1 victory. The early-season surge has been an im- pressive return to form for a team that last year stumbled to a 9-10 :nish. It was only the second losing season in Morett-Cur- tiss's 29 years as head coach of her alma mater, and while Penn State :elded a youthful team in 2015, the returning play- ers were determined to prevent it from happening again. One point of emphasis, Morett-Curtiss said, was to ensure that players kept their composure, particu- larly in late-game situations. "We lost :ve games [last year] in the last :ve minutes just giving up goals," she said. "That's something that we have def- initely been talking about and working on, just [to develop] that composure out of the back:eld a little more. The one thing that I try to express to the team a little more is even with our trip to Hol- land, it's really how we perform, how we compete. I think we're much, much bet- ter competitors for 70 minutes than we showed last year. Last year was just such an inexperienced team." The European trip wasn't the only step Penn State took to improve its outlook. Last year players took part in a sports science program that collected biomet- ric information: heart rates, hydration levels, sleep patterns and nutritional in- take. A student in the kinesiology de- partment monitored the program and made a series of recommendations aimed at optimizing the team's approach to conditioning. "We took to heart what he said," Morett-Curtiss said. "One thing we em- phasized this summer was getting more playing time on the :eld, as opposed to conditioning and li=ing, and I think that was a big di;erence with [players] coming in. We were able to have a more e

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