With the pressing weight of pads over her shoulders, Heather Hess stood below the rail of her post at J.S. Coyne Stadium during spring training, unsure of what to do.

The shots would come, the goalkeeper said, but she couldn’t react. Split-second decisions, a new coaching system, a starting job in question – it was all in her head.

And it all caught up.

‘I wasn’t used to it. Over-thinking,’ Hess said. ‘Then I got frustrated.’

The goalkeeper couldn’t relax as she couldn’t let the thoughts pass by. When instinct should have taken over, thoughts blanked reason. The tension shut her down. But staring at the backs of 10 teammates during practice last semester, she told herself something.

Let’s start over.

With a lineup that looks different this season from Hess’s steel enforced visor – the backfield has changed, the midfield is younger – the goalkeeper who began at Warwick Middle School walked away with a shutout against then-No. 8 Old Dominion.

As No. 18 Syracuse travels to Michigan to face Central Michigan today at 3 p.m., then No. 10 Michigan State Sunday at noon, Hess wants that shutout streak to continue. (She has two shutout halves in her first two games.)

Though Hess had six shutouts last season, conflicting thoughts mounted against her confidence.

‘Everyone has their bad days,’ she said, ‘but the confidence thing with me has always been an issue.’

Her self-appointed expectations hadn’t changed: she still had to block every shot, but there wasn’t the competitiveness from when she first saw Shannon Hess, her older sister, began playing the game before her. There wasn’t that motivation and aid she received from her father, Mike Hess, who also coached her in youth softball.

‘I had to stop thinking and just remember to do what I came here to do,’ Heather Hess reminded herself. ‘Have fun.’

Alone in the backfield, Heather Hess is the team’s eyes.

‘She’s a big voice back there for the backfielders,’ said Heather Doran, a senior who began playing the position since her junior year. ‘That just trickles through the whole team. The backfielders talk to the midfielders, the mids to the forward. Every game, every practice.’

But Doran recognized a struggling teammate, and she’d speak back the motivation to keep Hess going.

‘They’d just come out and talk to me. ‘We have confidence in you, we need you to have confidence in us,” Hess said, something that Heather Doran or Brittany Shannon would remind.

There’s more to that voice Doran hears now. It’s something that she said has improved, throughout the preseason and the season so far.

‘It’s simpler now,’ said head coach Ange Bradley. ‘She’s just playing to keep the ball out of the box.’

The coach added that Hess’ technical ability is what put her in that starting role.

‘She should not have a ton of roles, just concepts, just blocks,’ Bradley said. ‘It makes it a bit easier and less complicated.’

Hess can admit she’s having fun now. There aren’t lingering concerns. And her coach said there’s nothing like a returning senior.

‘I just see her keep growing as her confidence continues to lead her and lead us,’ Bradley said. ‘I can see it in her eye.’

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on September 4, 2008 at 12:00 pm