Today is National Field Hockey Day.
It is a day where folks are taking to social media and going to games, all looking to grow the game.
We’ve done our part to help grow the game with this site, which has morphed from features and watchlists to a daily blog and a statistical database.
Throughout, however, this field hockey site is all about storytelling. Our narratives have been about family, individual and team excellence, and the power of good coaching.
The stories have been guided by a number of scenarios which we keep seeing over and over again in terms of gameplay. We call them “laws,” in the scientific sense, where we try to describe a a fundamental and consistent pattern or regularity in the game of field hockey. These laws summarize collection of observations or experimental results, explaining what will happen but and sometimes why it happens.
Our first two laws come from observations from our time in the daily space, working alongside Jim Davis, the late field hockey scribe from The Trentonian (N.J.).
THE JIM DAVIS FIRST LAW — If a team sweeps the season series from another team, the third time that the two teams meet (either in an in-season or post-season championship), it is almost impossible for that team to make a clean sweep because the team making the first two wins believes it is superior to the other side
THE JIM DAVIS SECOND LAW — “There is no substitute for experience.” This has come to mean that a senior-laden team is much more likely to do well than one with freshmen and sophomores, no matter what the skill level.
THE JIM DAVIS THIRD LAW — Jim always wanted to highlight the hard-working player, not necessarily the player who, in his parlance, could “make the ball sing.”
These laws have been bolstered by ten more maxims that we have adhered to over the years, as follows:
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM FIRST LAW — “There is a reason why games aren’t played on paper.” Players on field hockey teams invariably play either beyond, or beneath, their expected capabilities, making field hockey a very difficult sport to predict. We sometimes call it the “Walter Mitty” Rule.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM SECOND LAW — “The easiest way to improve your game is to not make the same mistake over and over again.”
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM THIRD LAW — There are distinct roles in sport that, if violated, constitute an imbalance in the order: “Players play. Coaches coach. Officials officiate. Spectators spectate. Administrators administer.”
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM FOURTH LAW — While games are won on the pitch, games can so often be lost by the decisions that coaches make in picking their teams.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM FIFTH LAW — A goal scored in the first five minutes or the last five minutes in a half counts double because of the psychological boost for the team that scores it, as well as the negative effect on the team that concedes it.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM SIXTH LAW — A sure way to gauge the high level of competition within a league or conference is to observe either how many incidents you haven’t seen before, or how many times the umpires have to consult the rulebook.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM SEVENTH LAW — In tournament games, the most telling parts of the game are the first half of the last 15 minutes, when players are just starting to realize that every pass or movement may lead to the end of the season.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM EIGHTH LAW — Over the course of a season, offenses are often more advanced than defenses in the beginning, but late in the season, defenses, and especially goalkeepers, can have an outsized effect on the outcomes of games.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM NINTH LAW — A player who makes a key defensive stop in a game is often the person who winds up scoring the game-winning goal late in regulation or in overtime.
TOPOFTHECIRCLE.COM TENTH LAW — Goalies who often play a limited role on high-level teams with great offenses will improve to a high level by taking the best shot attempts from teamates every day in practice.
This site has also developed a four-part law which we seem to see on games that we liveblog for you:
THE LAW OF TOTC — In any game that is liveblogged by TopOfTheCircle.com, two of the following four will happen:
The lead will change sometime after the midpoint of the second half;
The phrase “I can’t believe what I am witnessing here” will be used;
Someone will do something so outrageously good that the blog entry will be revised long after the game is over so that the words can be found to describe the incident;
The game will go into overtime (or pretty darn close to it).
I hope you all have a great National Field Hockey Day and that the greatness applies throughout this week, one which culminates in the National High School Invitational later this week. We’ll have a multipart preview of this 64-game smorgasbord.
