Central Michigan University Athletics
Field Hockey Closes Season on Friday
10/29/2015 12:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. – Molly Pelowski’s first season as the Central Michigan field hockey coach hasn’t been, record-wise, what she had hoped it would be.
The Chippewas have recorded just one win entering their season finale on Friday (3 p.m.) at Ball State. It’s unfamiliar territory for Pelowski and for CMU, the defending MAC regular-season champion which will not play a post-season game for the first time in decades.
“In all my years in coaching, I’ve never not had a postseason, so it’s very strange thinking of (Wednesday) as our last practice and Friday being our last game,” said Pelowski, who played at Michigan and whose coaching resumé includes stops as an assistant at Michigan State, CMU and Kent State.
The Chippewas are 1-15 overall, 1-4 MAC. Ball State is 2-14, 0-4.
“I told the returners, ‘This is a very important game for our program because it sets the tone for what we want to accomplish in the future,’” Pelowski said. “When I approached the seniors, I said to them, ‘Play this weekend like it’s your first. Drink in the experience of everything because it’s going to be your last and you want it to be memorable and you want to go hard.’”
CMU will host the two-day MAC Tournament on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6-7. The field will be set on Sunday night.
The Chippewas won’t be in the field this year, but, Pelowski hopes, that’s an anomaly. In her first year, she has put her stamp on the program and begun the foundation building that is critical to any successful program.
There are several priorities, Pelowski said.
“I think it’s fitness, I think it’s mental focus, I think it’s experience,” she said. “All of those things influence it. There’s not any one thing that we can say, ‘Oh if only that one thing was different then we would have a different season.’
“There’s so many factors coming into it. There’s personnel change, there’s leadership change, I’m playing people in different positions, it’s a completely different structure and system. We had a very difficult schedule this year, we had a lot of faces who didn’t have a lot of playing experience. There’s so many things that play into the outcomes of what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Pelowski said her first year has, without question, been an educational one. And one on which to build.
“I’m a first-year coach so there’s a lot of things I don’t know,” she said. “Now I think I’m understanding the role more. There’s been a lot of change, even personally a lot has changed. There’s things that get lost in translation that I think in the future when we get roots down here that will get better.
“I think I have kids that are skilled. What I want to grow is their hockey IQ. There a few things, one is fitness, two is hockey skill, and three is hockey IQ. Those three things have to get better before August 2016 and that’s what we’re going to work on and it’s going to start today. The expectation moving forward is that we’ll be champions.”
