Books Added!!

Two books links were added so that extra information could be obtained about the actual rules and techniques involved in the sport of field hockey. Admittedly it is a very confusing sport if one doesn't understand the point of all the whistles and rules. These books could help clear it up a little bit not only for beginners but also for spectators. It is equally as difficult watching the game as it is to play it sometimes!

Blue Hen Summer Field Hockey Camps

This is the information for two different summer camps we are holding here at the University this summer for varying skill levels. The information is all here with prices, etc, but if you want to sign up, you have to call the phone number I included in this form. Also there is a summer camps link which I am including in my important links section which should help tremedously with the registration process!

Blue Hen Day Camp
Location: Rullo Stadium and other UD athletic complexes
Who: Girls ages 12-18, Grades 6-12
Cost: $210
Dates: July 11-14
Hours: 9:00 A.M. Through 3:30 P.M.
Registration: July 11, 8:15 A.M.
Call: (302)366-1005

Blue Hen ELITE Field Hockey Camp
Location: Rullo Stadium
Who: Girls with VARSITY Level Skills, Grades 9-College Freshman
Cost: $435 Residents, $385 Commuters
Dates: July 20-23, Hours 4 P.M. July 20-Noon July23
Call: (302) 366-1005
Note: This is an Overnight Camp!

Summer Camps and Tenative Schedule

A large part of field hockey is the off season training that is done to get prepared for the competitive season. This is what differentiates the regular players from the exceptional. There are many different types of training opportunities available throughout the summer in Delaware and all over the United States. This cross-training is an exceptional way to not only network yourself to the field hockey world, but also to open up job opportuities and playing opportunities after college. When the dates for the University of Delaware camps are released, I am going to post them on the site as well as many other summer camp dates for different universities as well as some U.S. hockey open trial dates.
In University of Delaware field hockey news, our tenative 2005 schedule has been released. While this is only tenative, most games will remain constant as fall approaches.

2005 University Of Delaware Field Hockey Schedule

Aug. 20 American (Scrimmage) 12 Noon
Aug. 27 Pacific (At Berkley, CA) 1 P.M. (P.T.)
Aug. 28 At California 1 P.M. (P.T.)
Aug. 30 At Stanford 1 P.M. (P.T.)
Sept. 3, 4 Blue Hen Classic 11 A.M., 2:30 P.M.
(ft. Duke, Ohio State, Richmond)
Sept. 9 Rutgers 5 P.M.
Sept. 16 at St. Joseph's 7 P.M.
Sept. 18 at Lafayette 1:30 P.M.
Sept. 23 at Temple 3 P.M.
Sept. 25 at Hofstra 1 P.M.
Sept. 30 at Virginia Commonwealth 7 P.M.
Oct. 2 Northeastern 1 P.M.
Oct. 7 at William and Mary 7 P.M.
Oct. 9 at Old Dominion 1 P.M.
Oct. 16 at Maryland 1 P.M.
Oct. 21 Towson 7 P.M.
Oct. 23 James Madison 1 P.M.
Oct. 28 Drexel 7 P.M.
Oct. 30 LaSalle 1:30 P.M.
Nov. 5-6 CAA Championships At Higher Seed tba
Nov. 12-13 NCAA 1st and 2nd Rounds tba
Nov. 18-20 NCAA Championships (at highest seed) tba

The Blue Hen Classic

This weekend was the Blue Hen Classic which was our home tournament that ended the 2005 Spring season. Many skilled teams were there including a Blue Hen Alumni Team, The Metro Rush U.S. field hockey summer league team, St. Joes, Temple, LaSalle, UMBC, Drexel, and Lafayette. All of these teams are included in either our regular season play or our spring schedule of play. Our team won the first game against the Alumni which was an important one for us to win. The day then went downward. We ended up losing three and tying one. There is no real solution to our losses, it just seemed that we were out of sync. We were losing to teams that we shouldn't have lost to. It was somewhat disappointing to end the spring season on this note. The positive side of things is that it really magnified the things which we need to begin to work on throughout the summer before pre-season. From now on our schedule will include teams lifts in the morning on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in order to maintain our level of strength we have built over the spring. Posts which follow will focus on the summer events in relationship to field hockey. There are many tournaments and U.S. games that are played locally so that if one wanted to catch a game of a high level of field hockey, they won't have to travel far.

The Weather

Seeing as the weather seems to serve as the decider as to the time and place where one can play field hockey, I decided to add a link to the weather channel, where you can check out any zip code and get a five day forecast. This may come in handy for those who are trying to plan either a field hockey event, or go and watch a field hockey event!!

Update On The Weekend

The Rutgers weekend went well. We ended up winning the tournament event's we didn't win all of the games we should have. This weekend was much improved from the last few tournament weekends we have had. We are finally applying the concepts we are learning throughout the spring practices. We tied PENN which was a disappointment, but at the same time we beat Temple and Rutgers who have proven to be two of our more formidable opponents. We were scoring goals which means that our offense is beginning to pick up and we didn't allow many goals against us which means that our defense stepped up to the challenge as well. This upcoming weekend is our annual Blue Hen Classic which is the tournament to end the spring training season. It is held at rule Stadium on our campus at University of Delaware. It is a great tournament to come out to be cause you get an opportunity to view a lot of different playing styles. One of the National Summer League teams will be there as well as a Delaware Alumni team. The Delaware Alumni team includes many players who have played anywhere from last year up to about twenty years ago at Delaware. The tournament is a great opportunity for us to celebrate the end of our spring season by setting the tone for the summer program. Our recruits also come to this tournament in order to get a view of what the team is like and begin to mesh with their future team. Stop by on Sunday, It will be some great competition and hopefully some equally as great weather!

New Links Added!

I just wanted to dedicate a post to draw attention to the two new links I added to the blog. The dita website is a specific company which carries sticks and equipment. It is the company which we buy all of our sticks and most of our equipment from here at the University of Delaware. The other website, Planet Field Hockey, keeps a good update of most field hockey action not only in the United States, but internationally also. Check these sites out because they have a bunch of cool field hockey equipment and updates!

Rutgers Tournament

This coming weekend we have our first 11 aside tournament at Rugers University. By 11 aside I mean that we are finally back to playing our full field as we would in our competitive season. It has been awhile since we have played this form and it is exciting to finally have trained hard enough to build back up to this. This tournament is going to be very important to us because we lost a few crucial games this past weekend at the St. Joes tournament. We tied 4 games and won only won to teams that aren't even ranked consistently in the top 20. We will get an opportunity to face many of these teams on Sunday such as Temple, Villanova, and LaSalle. After this weekend we are down to only a week and our final Spring Fling tournament which ends our Spring season and leads us into our summer training phase. This is a link to the facility at which we will be playing this weekend.