US Field Hockey News

Olympic Qualifier Pools Announced: USA to Begin Tourney with Familiar Foes

 Colorado Springs (October 30, 2003) -- The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has announced the pools for the women's field hockey Olympic Qualifying Tournament, March 19-28 in Auckland, New Zealand. The top four or five teams will qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games.

The United States women enter the tournament as the #6 seed and will begin play in Pool B with either Korea or Great Britain, Spain (#3), Japan (# 7) and Russia (#10). Pool A includes the lower seeded team between Korea and Great Britain, Germany (#4), New Zealand (#5), Ireland (#8) and Ukraine (#9).

The tournament's top seed in Pool A will go to either Great Britain or Korea depending on how the two teams place at December's Champions Challenge.

"All the teams are good, quality teams," said USA coach Beth Anders in sizing up the Qualifier pools. "Right now, we're just happy to be preparing and training for the tournament . We've played everyone in our pool, and that's a positive."

The USA saw recent action against Great Britain and Japan at October's International Atlantic Cup. The USA played to a 1-1 draw with Great Britain and lost a tight 1-0 contest to eventual tourney champion Japan. The U.S. women defeated Japan, 2-0, at the 2000 Olympic Qualifying Tournament and defeated Japan in penalty strokes in crossover play at the 2002 World Cup. Most recently, the USA lost a 4-3 match to Japan at the 2003 Champions Challenge

Also at the Champions Challenge, the USA dropped a 2-1 decision to pool foe Spain. The U.S. topped Spain in three of four games in a series in Barcelona last May.

The U.S.women last met Korea and Russia at the 2002 Champions Challenge where the team lost to Korea 1-0 and downed Russia in a pair of games, 2-1 and 1-0.

The number of teams qualifying from the tournament will depend on the status of the Olympic host nation's Greek team. According to the current FIH format, Greece would qualify for the Olympic Games if it can defeat the qualifying tournament's #10 seed, Russia, in a best-of-three series. A Greek victory in the series would send Greece to the Olympic Games and would limit the number of teams advancing to the Olympic Games from the qualifying tournament to four. A Russia win in the series would send the top five teams from the Qualifier to Athens. Without a tradition of international hockey in the country, Greece did not receive the host country's traditional automatic berth in the Olympic Games.

The FIH is in the process of confirming whether Greece will elect to particpate in the play-off.

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