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United Airlines Field Hockey League
Concludes With Semifinals, Finals in Virginia Beach
Colorado Springs,
Colo. —The Southern Charm will seek its fourth
consecutive United Airlines Field Hockey League Championship this week, when the league’s
top four teams meet in the semifinals and final at the U.S. Field Hockey National Training
Center in Virginia Beach. The “home” team
for the semifinals, the fourth-seeded Tidewater Tempest (5-4-3) has a distinctive local
flavor to the roster including legendary Old Dominion coach Beth Anders. Anders’
squad features ten former or current members of her Lady Monarch teams including 2001
All-America selections Tiffany Snow and Tara Herrmann and former U.S. national team player
Pam Neiss Stuper. High School All-America pick Jenny Angat of Virginia Beach’s
Tallwood High School will also be making a home appearance for the Tempest. Old Dominion’s
Anglea Loy led the league in scoring during the regular season with 9 goals, while
1999-2000 NCAA Player of the Year Sally Northcroft (Ball State) added 5 goals for the
Tempest. Northcroft is joined on the Tempest roster by another NCAA Player of the Year in
the Univ. of Maryland’s Autumn Welsh who earned the honor for 2001-02. In the other semifinal, the
#2 seed Midwest Cyclones meet #3 seed Metro
Rush in a re-match of their 2001 semifinal. The Cyclones downed the Rush, 3-1, in last
year’s game.
The league runners-up in
each of the past two seasons, the Cyclones (6-2-4) tied the Charm for the regular season
crown and narrowly lost the top seed spot based on goals scored during the season, 21-18.
Head coach Nancy Cox (Asst. coach Univ. Michigan) has the benefit of some true “coaches on the field” for the
semifinals including Olympians Sheryl Johnson (head coach Stanford Univ.) and Marcia
Pankratz (head coach Univ. of Michigan) as well as Tracey Griesbaum (head coach Univ. of
Iowa), Lisa Celluci (asst. Univ. of Iowa) and Amy Robertson (head coach Indiana Univ.).
The team also includes former U.S. national team player Natalie Dawson in addition to
current U.S. junior team players Kristi Gannon, April Fronzoni, Molly Powers, Kelsey
Keeran, Katherine Blair and All-America selections Lauren Mazziotto (Ohio Univ.) and
Tiffany Leister (Univ. of Iowa). All-America selection Vanessa Immordino (Ohio State)
scored 3 goals during the season for the Cyclones. Princeton Univ. head coach
Beth Bozman returns the Metro Rush (5-2-5) to the semifinals for the fourth time in five
years. The Rush roster features eight players from Bozman’s Princeton team that
earned a NCAA national semifinal berth in 2001, and includes All-America selections Claire
Miller and Ilvy Friebe. Friebe ranked second among the league’s top scorers in 2002
with 8 goals while another Princeton star, Cory Picketss, added 3 goals. The Rush roster
also features former Old Dominion All-America selection Adriane Yoder. The weekend games conclude
the fifth season of U.S. Field Hockey’s elite-level summer competition series. The
seven-team league completed double round-robin play during two weekends of play at the
Univ. of North Carolina and Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. Athletes were selected during
team tryouts in the spring, or placed on the squads as members of the U.S. junior national
teams.
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