The waiting is over, and so is the 1997 Michigan field hockey season.
After the Wolverines lost the Big Ten title game Sunday to Penn State, 2-1, at the Big Ten championships in Iowa City, they were holding on to the chance that they might receive an at-large bid. Those hopes were dashed yesterday afternoon when Michigan's name did not come up in the NCAA's tournament brackets.
Penn State, as winners of the tournament, received an automatic bid to the NCAA field hockey tournament and it will face Massachusetts tomorrow.
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| DANIEL CASTLE/Daily Senior Aimee Remigio, junior Loveita Wilkinson and senior Julie Flachs have played their last game of the season. Michigan will not play in the NCAA tournament. |
Lousy weather postponed one of the conference tournaments this weekend, forcing the NCAA to delay holding its "play-in" games until Tuesday afternoon.
The "play-ins" are games held between the champions of two of the four conferences to which the NCAA does not automatically extend bids. As a result of the delay, the Wolverines were kept on hold until yesterday afternoon.
After Sunday's loss, the six seniors on the team could not be certain that they had played in their last field hockey game, but yesterday's announcement confirmed that they indeed have played in the last game of their collegiate career.
Although few dared hope for a last-second extension of their college careers, the possiblity no doubt distracted the Wolverines - until yesterday.
"I wasn't expecting to go," senior goalkeeper Amy Helber said. "To get geared up and let down again is too hard. ... It's kind of a helpless feeling."
The Wolverines were uneasy about the wait, but what bothers them even more is they feel that perhaps they were overlooked by the selection comittee.
"The comittee hasn't really been taking a strong look at the midwest," Michigan coach Marcia Pankratz said.
Pankratz - Big Ten Coach of the Year - believes that perhaps the selection committee had certain teams on its mind, and when those teams had disappointing seasons, the committee looked elsewhere.
"Instead of them looking at how strong Michigan and Michigan State were this year, they only saw how poorly Iowa and Northwestern were performing." Pankratz said.
Both the Hawkeyes and the Wildcats lost their first-round games in the Big Ten Tournament. Michigan State advanced to the semifinals.
"It's frustrating because I know that we have the ability to be playing with the best of them," Helber said. "We're one of the top 12 teams in the nation without a doubt,"
The NCAA chooses at-large bids based on teams' records against ranked teams as well as overall performance.
"It's a system that's totally subjective, not in any way objective," Helber said.
Now that the season is officially over, the Wolverines can try to deal with the end of the season in more typical ways.
But nothing about this season was typical.
The field hockey team set records this year for wins, assists and total points. The Big Ten sent a great deal of hardware to individual members of the team as well. Kelli Gannon won Freshman of the Year honors, team captain Julie Flachs set records for goals in a season and points in a season, as well as career marks in both categories. Flachs also won Big Ten recognition as Player of the Year.
The singular moment of this season came in the regular season finale as Michigan blanked Michigan State 4-0 to clinch the first Big Ten title in the 25-year history of the program.
"The things that we accomplished ... they were our goals but in the past they were things that we just dreamed of," Reichenbach said.
Now they're reality, and the future is bright - for the freshmen, sophomores and juniors.
The six seniors on the team have now, finally, officially played the last game of their collegiate careers, and not one of them is happy about it.
"It's hard, it's something that you dedicated, for most of us, eight years or more of our lives to - and now we don't really have the opportunity for competitive field hockey anymore." Helber said.
Helber is optimistic about the rest of the team that will be returning next year.
"They have great, great things ahead of them," Helber said.
For the underclass members of the team, this season is merely a starting point, something to build on. While it may have hurt to be so close, and then to be strung along for three days, Michigan is already moving on.
Pankratz was difficult to reach last night; she had little time for reporters as she was burning up the phone lines talking to recruits. Players, too, were already looking ahead to next season.
"We've decided that we don't ever want to be in that situation again," Reichenbach said. "So next year there's not going to be a question of whether we're going to be in or out of the tournament - we're going to be in."
Pankratz is optimistic as well.
"It gets them motivated to train very hard this spring," Pankratz said. "They're motivated to get back at it this fall and to prove who they are."
The Wolverines are Big Ten Champions, for the first time ever. It took 25 years to win their first Big Ten title. It won't take 25 more.
11-13-97
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