Ange Bradley wants to make sure her team has a physical edge. The edge is ingrained on Tuesday.

When in her court, she determines a queen.

The coach has spent her fair amount of time this season working on schemes and positioning, but realized a fault in her coaching after a loss to unranked Kent State.

‘I think I got a little too soft in working more systems with so many returning players,’ Bradley said. ‘The mental toughness piece is the piece that we’re still working on finishing. That comes from tough, demanding Tuesday practices.’

With Tuesday comes a familiar solution to the fault: her court.

The practice Bradley is referring to is the weekly tradition that has become known as Queen’s Court. The practice style, which Bradley instilled since accepting the head coaching position three years ago, has become a trademark for the SU players and something to expect after a lackluster performance.

The practice focuses on the physical aspects of the game and pairs players up in limited man situations, highlighted by one-on-one matches — like a game of one-on-one basketball.

Junior forward Heather Susek playfully recalled memories of the practice before Wednesday’s practice, but knows of the emotions that surface when Queen’s Court commences.

‘Everyone gets a little frustrated,’ Susek said with a laugh. ‘Sometimes there is yelling at each other, but at the end of practice, we all come together.’

The practices — which Susek said are the hardest of the week — are usually on Tuesdays and are tools Bradley can use to make sure her team doesn’t get too complacent.

The practice starts by ranking the players, one through 24, with one being the most talented player in the eyes of the coaching staff. Then the players are matched up based on their rank. The one seed matches up against the 24th seed, and so on and so forth.

In the end, the queen is crowned: the best player every Tuesday.

The two players compete for 30 seconds, with the winner moving up and the loser moving down. The Queen’s Court is the field where the No. 1 player starts, and the cellar is where the worst player plays.

‘It’s basically a mini-tournament,’ Bradley said, ‘Like what you would have at the NCAA championship or the basketball championship.’

After playing a couple rounds, the queen is determined by the winner in the top court.

Then another court begins immediately.

The players team up with the top players in their court and play a couple rounds of two-on-two. The process is then repeated, with the top eight seeded players being split into two teams of four for the final match.

Susek said the intense practices lead to quite a number of heated exchanges and are the closest practice gets to a game-like situation.

Said Susek: ‘It really got us to compete against each other and know exactly what it means to bring that to the games.’

Bradley said the team has done the practice many times this year. One of the reasons for the increased intense practices figures to be because of the Orange’s early-season loss to unranked Kent State.

The 2-1 overtime lose was the first time SU lost to an unranked opponent since Oct. 25, 2007, when Cornell beat Syracuse, 3-2.

Sophomore back Iona Holloway said the team uses the practice as a tool to keep the players levelheaded. Even if it routinely is one of the most hectic field hockey sessions, week in and week out, across the nation.

‘This year I think what we are working on is not expecting anything,’ Holloway said. ‘When we lost to Kent State this year, that was absolutely not what was expected to happen. Perhaps we were expecting to just win.’

After watching her team lose to fourth-ranked Princeton over the weekend for the team’s third loss of the year, Bradley figures she will use the practice even more this season.

Two of SU’s losses were to opponents ranked higher then them, but the Queen’s Court sessions will still be used to keep the players on an edge.

For as long as the team’s true queen, Bradley, wants for it to last.

‘It’s just competition and going at each other every day in practice,’ Bradley said. ‘We use it on Tuesdays — when we are furthest away from games — to create that competitive spirit and mental toughness of going after each other and competing.’

rwmarf@syr.edu

Published on September 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm