As the clock wound down and Syracuse celebrated its fifth straight victory to open the 2007 season, it was clear a new day had dawned for the Orange field hockey team.

With the 4-3 victory against Central Michigan on Friday, Syracuse opened the season 5-0 for the first time since 1997, when the Orange jumped out to a 6-0 record to start the year. Before the game, SU earned a top-20 ranking in the STX/NFHCA Coaches Poll for the first time in three years.

But a constant reminder of the past lingered literally on the players’ backs.

The inactive players for the game were still wearing their shooting shirts, displaying a significant number in SU history: 59. While the number resonates with football fans for being the year Ernie Davis and Co. earned the program’s only national title, it also means a lot to new head coach Ange Bradley and her team.

‘The most goals that we’ve ever scored in the program’s history is 58, so we want to break that,’ Bradley said. ‘So each year, we just work on rewriting our Syracuse history. We’re trying to build upon the history that was created for us.’

It will be a difficult task for Bradley to build on the history that her predecessor created for her, considering previous head coach Kathleen Parker’s resume. Parker had been the face of Syracuse field hockey for 29 seasons, earning a 316-214-14 record.

But Bradley is not just replacing a person. She’s altering the style of Syracuse field hockey by installing a faster-paced offense, a revamped conditioning program and a more competitive environment.

The last five seasons under Parker’s watch did not show the same dominance as the previous 24, as SU labored to a 49-49 record since 2002. The Orange also failed to make the Big East Tournament twice in those five years.

Krissy Woods, a senior who left the team because she suffered career-ending injuries to her back in the offseason, recalled Parker telling her team she would not return as upsetting but not surprising.

‘It was hard and sad to see her go,’ Woods said. ‘But I think we were ready for a change.’

That change came just one month later when Bradley was hired as the new head coach. While Bradley doesn’t have the 300 wins or Hall of Fame status, she comes to Syracuse with her own share of accolades.

In her six seasons as head coach at Richmond, Bradley turned the Spiders around, leading them to five consecutive Atlantic 10 Conference Championships and a 42-game winning streak in conference play.

In her first meeting with Syracuse, Bradley talked about Richmond and the successful program she had built but emphasized even more the changes that had to be made at SU.

‘I told them the first thing they have to do is become Division I athletes,’ Bradley said. ‘They needed to become fit and that was going to be a huge focus for us in the spring.’

Woods said the players were going online to retrieve updated training schedules and programs, a far cry from the same training packets Woods remembered receiving every year from Parker. The programs also were geared more towards field hockey-specific training, something Bradley has emphasized since her days at Richmond.

In Bradley’s first season at Richmond in 2001, the Spiders earned a spot in the semifinals of the conference tournament, where they met Massachusetts. Richmond was controlling the game against the first-seeded Minutewomen, owning a 1-0 lead late into the game.

Bradley still remembers seeing 1:29 left on the clock when the meltdown of her young team began. Richmond turned the ball over and UMass responded with the game-tying goal. The Minutewomen prevailed in overtime, handing Bradley the last A-10 loss of her career.

‘For me, I was just sick,’ she said. ‘I sat in my hotel room in the dark for a long time and watched that over and over.’

Bradley wanted to make sure her players, like her, never forgot that 1:29. She put a clock up during practice so the players would be aware of the score and situation during every training session.

Richmond responded by going undefeated in conference and winning the A-10 championship the next season. The Spiders earned their first NCAA tournament bid in school history and began a winning streak that has lasted five years and is still alive.

Now at Syracuse, Bradley has continued to put competitive situations at the forefront of her training. When Bradley has her players compete in a four-on-four drill, she puts the clock up and keeps score. And there’s certainly extra incentive to win.

‘If you win – it’s kind of old school I guess – you go get a drink,’ she said. ‘If you lose, you get on the line.’

And the competition doesn’t stop there. If four players are running a sprint, the winner will be allowed to grab a drink, while the next three compete again, and it continues until one person is left running.

‘It’s about creating opportunities in practice to teach how to win, how to go after something,’ Bradley said. ‘The next time you’re going to go harder because you don’t want to be doing those sprints. A lot of people might not agree with that philosophy, but it works.’

Forward Shannon Taylor followed Bradley from Richmond to Syracuse, along with forward Lindsay Conrad and midfielder Lena Voelmle. The three players will have to sit out until January because of the transfer, but they were able to offer advice to the rest of the team on how to deal with Bradley’s aggressive coaching style.

The first time Bradley implemented her competitive running style was in an offseason training session in the Women’s Building. Taylor remembers some of the players groaning and struggling to deal with a program they were not used to. It was up to Taylor, Conrad and Voelmle to convince the players they would survive.

‘What she does is great mental preparation for games,’ Taylor said. ‘You’re down, with 60 seconds (left in the game), and you need a goal and you remember all those times that you’re on the line, and that’s what gets you through it.’

Bradley’s first team at SU has 11 freshmen, one graduate student recruit from Scotland and three Richmond transfers. Of the 24 players on the roster, only seven had played a single game for Parker.

Certain players do not fit into Bradley’s coaching style, and she prides herself in recruiting players that will work in her system. One player, who Bradley said would not be happy at Syracuse, was a recruit that was ready to make a commitment to the Orange, and then decided to go elsewhere.

‘There’s a lot of ways to get to the result, and there’s a lot of different styles, and I don’t want to hold prisoners,’ Bradley said. ‘So if you’re not used to working hard and being pushed every day to get out of your comfort zone, I’m probably not the best person for you.’

Bradley’s even beginning to control all aspects of the team. She barred the players from talking to the media last week when SU entered the national rankings. Assistant coach Lynn Farquhar said the coaches did not think the players’ heads were where they needed to be.

After Friday’s win and a loss to Temple on Sunday, the players were still unavailable for comment.

Woods said the move to cut off media access is another example of the changing environment of Syracuse field hockey.

‘Coach Parker never would have done that,’ Woods said. ‘The intensity is definitely there.’

As for the goals record, Bradley sees it as a way to show that Syracuse field hockey has changed. In the last five seasons, SU averaged just 37 goals per game. Already, through six games, the Orange has scored 17 goals and is on pace for 51 goals in the regular season – seven shy of the program record.

Still, Bradley sees 59 goals as just a stepping stone to even more scoring at Syracuse. She thinks teams need to put in 80-85 goals every year to be a consistent top-10 program.

‘It’s just about continuous improvement,’ Bradley said. ‘I think sometimes that’s hard for an athlete because it seems like it’s never good enough. It’s a drain mentally to constantly be pushed and pushed out of your comfort zone day in and day out, but those that continue standing hopefully will have a ring on their finger at the end.’

Published on September 10, 2007 at 12:00 pm