The Syracuse field hockey team could be without four of its starters this weekend, after the Orange played without the four this past weekend against Albany, SU head coach Ange Bradley said Wednesday.

The group includes SU’s top two all-time leading scorers in senior back Maggie Befort and senior forward Lindsey Conrad, as well as two starters who have appeared in every game this season: senior forward Shelby Schraden and sophomore goalkeeper Leann Stiver.

Bradley said the situation is one that will be handled internally and declined to comment further.

When asked why the four players didn’t play in last Sunday’s 2-1 overtime win at Albany, the coach responded, ‘Each week, we have a different travel squad — that’s been a standard since the start of the season. And this week, they weren’t on the travel squad. That’s an internal team manner, and that’s where we’ll leave it.’

The team was noticeably lighter with three of the four players not at practice on Wednesday. Befort was the only player present, and Bradley said the status of the four players remains up in the air for this weekend.

Bradley confirmed the issue with the players is not related to injury or suspensions and said the team has already moved on.

‘We have to have you guys stop asking us questions, that’s a big thing,’ Bradley said. ‘In our mind, we have moved forward. This has happened, and we have moved forward. We’re done with it. It gets brought back up when I’m being asked questions about it.

‘For us to move forward — we moved forward last week. We went out, we represented Syracuse with pride, passion and we played Syracuse (field) hockey. And we won.’

The decision to not play the players this past week was made on ‘either Wednesday or Thursday’ of last week, Bradley said. Only Bradley was made available last Friday at the team’s weekly media opportunity. At the time, Bradley did not talk about the fact that four regular starters would not be traveling with the team, but said on Wednesday that the reasoning behind not making players available to the media had nothing to do with the benching of the four regular starters.

‘We had a couple off days in the week, and we just needed to be able to fix that up,’ Bradley said.

To compensate for the loss of the players, the Orange (8-4) started the game off with only two forwards for the first time all year.

Freshman Ashtin Klingler made her first start of her career at forward, and sophomore back Erika Wachter and junior midfielder Shannon Connolly got starts in place of the absent players. Freshman back Anna Crumb got her first taste of collegiate hockey in the game as well, burning her redshirt in the process, Bradley said.

Freshman goalkeeper Rachel Sayer had only been a part of two practices since injuring her knee in August, but started in place of Stiver. Bradley said Sayer got the start over Stiver because she earned it.

‘She is in there because she had the opportunity, and she earned the starting job,’ Bradley said. ‘We have three goalkeepers, and that starting job is evaluated each day, each week at practice. Last week at practice, Rachel won out the starting job.’

When asked if the three seniors who didn’t travel with the team last week had lost their positions in a similar fashion, Bradley said, ‘Absolutely.’

Junior midfielder Martina Loncarica, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime Sunday and leads the team in goals, said playing without the four usual starters was definitely a change, but she tried to focus on who was on the field rather than who was off it.

‘We just move forward,’ Loncarica said. ‘We try to do the best with the people who are here and who want to play. We just move forward.’

Sayer had a similar stance on the issue as Loncarica and thought the game was a tribute to the squad’s depth.

‘We, as a team, can play with anyone on the field, and I think that’s great for us,’ Sayer said. ‘It’s something that we had to just grow from. Our team stepped up. We had freshmen starting that had never played on the field before, and they did great.’

It may not be evident which players will be traveling with the team this weekend, but Bradley has made it clear her team has moved past the ‘internal manners’ that plagued the starting lineup last week.

Bradley is adamant the issue is already a thing of the past, even if the four starters aren’t back this week.

Said Bradley: ‘As far as we’re considered with it, we’ve moved on.’

rwmarf@syr.edu

Published on October 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm