Coming off back-to-back field hockey national championships and losing six graduating players from last year’s squad, including four-time All-American Paula Infante and 2006 second team All-American back Kristina Edmonds, it would seem Terp coach Missy Meharg’s team would be poised for a letdown sometime soon.
However, Meharg doesn’t see a problem.
“I don’t really look at it as anything more than a business,” Meharg said. “You just keep developing great new teams, and that’s the challenge in college coaching versus national or professional coaching. You need to keep that energy alive and try to find new ways to be successful.”
It also helps the Terps, who are ranked No. 1 in the National Field Hockey Coaches Association preseason poll for the second straight year, welcome easily one of the best recruiting classes in the country. Among the six newcomers are Under-21 National Team midfield/forward Meghan Dean and Katie O’Donnell, a member of the Senior National Team who became the youngest athlete to get a cap in international competition at the age of 16.
“I don’t know if it’s about replacing; it’s about reloading,” Meharg said. “That’s what’s really nice about Maryland, is it’s the place to be. We’re fortunate enough to attract the very best student athletes to play field hockey for us.”
The defense, which led the nation in goals against average last season, will try to overcome the losses of Infante and Edmonds with Brianna Davies, who started every game last season as a freshman, and Ellen Ott, an experienced junior. They will be helped by returning All-Americans, junior midfield/back Susie Rowe and senior co-captain Kathryn Masson in goal.
“Our team is very homogenous right now,” Masson said. “There’s not really one or two players we’re always looking to. It’s everyone on this team has potential to play. It’s really exciting because I don’t think Maryland hockey has had that for a long time.”
The offense returns players who accounted for two-thirds of the team’s goals last season, paced by sophomore Nicole Muracco, who led the Terps with 33 points last season. Rowe scored 12 goals last year, and senior co-captain Janneke van Leeuwen led the team with 14 assists.
With a productive spring in which the team got used to the players it lost and the returning five All-Region performers, the Terps have become a strong bet to complete the three-peat, something all three programs who have won back-to-back titles in NCAA history have been able to do.
Meharg, a six-time National Coach of the Year entering her 20th season, prefers to hold off that talk for now.
“The thing about the concept of three-peating is you can look at it two ways: You can three-peat or you can win three national championships one by one,” she said. “We’ve never been a team that’s looked anywhere but in the moment. Last season is a wonderful thing, and you can read about it in the storybooks. But as far as really doing the hard work, these women have some ways to go before they can think about three-peating.”
Contact reporter Eric Detweiler at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com.
