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| Belk Turf Field. There is no place like home! |
The Davidson Field Hockey team met up with an old friend again this past week, grass.
A surface that most of us haven’t played on since our high school glory days came back into the picture this past Wednesday evening as we traveled to Radford, Virginia for our first conference game of the season. In order to prepare for this match-up we abandoned our extremely nice and extremely fast turf for two days of practice on the grassy knoll behind Baker. Although the change of scenery was nice, it only took a couple of hits and missed stops before we were begging to go back to the turf and wondering how on earth we ever played on such an awful surface.
Playing on grass is a completely different game. The skills and strategy that we practice on turf is often ineffective on grass because it is a much slower paced game that is much more unpredictable. You never know when a perfectly hit ball is going to hit a ditch and pop over your stick, or a ball that looks like it might be going out of bounds decides to stop right on the end line, or even worse, when you are dribbling the ball and it just decides to stop instead of staying on your stick like it’s supposed to.
Despite two extremely frustrating days of practice, our hard work paid off when we beat Radford 1-0 on their home field. The trip to Radford has normally been a struggle for us as we couldn’t get past the frustrating surface to carry home a win, but this year it was different. We hope to carry the excitement of our win into this weekend as we return to the turf (thank goodness!) to face Richmond and Georgetown. Both of these games will be great matchups as we look to extend our record to 8-2. Keep following along for more behind the scenes D.C.F.H. action. Go Cats! –Tobe #7.
