The Quinnipiac field hockey team has made major adjustments during the 2014 season including adding 10 freshmen. With an extremely tough out of conference schedule, head coach Becca Main has done her best to ease the transition from high school to college for a lot of these young players.
Main isn’t the only one who has pushed this team forward to help make sure the team plays the quality brand of Quinnipiac field hockey that everyone became accustomed to seeing last season. A lot of the help has come from one the leaders on the field and off the in senior forward Danielle Allan.
“Coming in as captain this year, one of my goals was to make the transition for these freshmen and underclassmen, who haven’t stepped on the field before, to understand what it’s like to play for Quinnipiac field hockey,” Allan said. “There’s a lot of pride with our sport and our team and I had to come out and lead by example, set the tone on the field and let them follow in the footsteps.”
Unlike her three previous seasons with the team, Allan’s role on the team this year has been different; aside from putting goals in the net. A lot of the credit is contributed to those upperclassmen that set the example for her when she arrived to Quinnipiac as a freshman.
“I credit my upperclassmen from when I got here,” Allan said. “They showed me the ropes, they taught me what to do. You have girls like Jess Rusin and Kristen Engelke. Having them with me on the line, they were great role models. I had them with me for three years so coming in this year, it was my duty to take on that role and introduce these freshmen and teach them the way I was taught.”
Becca Main also deserves credit with her coaching ability that helped bring Allan to a level she didn’t even know she could reach. To have a coach with such a great knowledge for the game of field hockey like Main made it a lot easier for Allan to step into that leadership role.
“I think the reason that she is such a fantastic example of how we want to play Bobcat field hockey is she had the exact same heart and determination when she was recruited,” Main said. “I think that’s very rare that you find an athlete who comes in with a mental capacity that she has. You give her a goal and she fights for that goal until she achieves it and if she has to work on it longer, she’ll work on it longer.”
Allan holds a strong will for the game of field hockey and since she is very coachable and open to learning, it helped set her up to be one of the prime leaders on this team even when she was one of the underclassmen. Her job is to now build those same characteristics within the youth of this organization.
“In any organization or club, or sport you know who the leaders are even when they first come in,” Main said. “Then it’s a matter of building that because you can have the right mentality, but are you able to athletically achieve the things that put you on a different pedestal in terms of a mentor and mentee kind of a person and I think she shifted nicely as a junior into a mentor.”
The tough schedule early in the season may have been a challenge for some of the players on the team, including Allan, but it is something that she believes will help define the Bobcats as conference play is now underway.
“It introduced our young team to tough field hockey,” Allan said. “We came out against teams like Penn State, Boston College, Lafayette and we were able to hang with them. I think that being able to hang in with teams like that shows the potential that this young team had. Although our age and youth are young, we have the ability to play to a high level.”
In any sport, every coach stresses the need to stick to a game plan. It is something that has disciplined the team thus far, which is why the road looks promising for both the near and long term future.
“When you put together a lineup it’s not that you just are putting the best 11 on the field,” Main said. “You want to sprinkle the leadership and the voice throughout the field so that other people who aren’t as loud, who lead differently, are around those people. So Danielle makes the wheels turn and that’s been really nice.”
While the team’s ultimate goal is to win a MAAC championship for the second consecutive season, Allan has made it clear to the team that they need to focus on one game at a time. With that, it helps relieve some of the pressure that has been put on them heading into conference play.
“Team’s are gunning for us,” Allan said. “We have a target on our backs. We just won our conference and we need to practice like we’re in second place and play like we are in first. We need to come out and play each game for what it’s worth. We can’t look too far ahead into the conference and I think that that’s what we’ve been doing a good job on.”
Since winning four of its last seven games, the Bobcats are gearing up for a late season surge, especially by closing out the year with four conference games.
The Bobcats earned its first conference win of the year this past weekend with a 1-0 win against Siena and are set to play at Bryant on Sunday, Oct. 19 at 12 p.m.
