Central Michigan University Athletics
Field Hockey Goes to Longwood for MAC Opener
9/24/2015 12:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The Central Michigan field hockey team goes to Farmville, Va., on Friday for its Mid-American Conference opener with Longwood.
"it's a new season now," first-year CMU coach Molly Pelowski said. "I think we're in a great position to turn around what has been a very difficult front end of the season."
The Chippewas are 0-7, but are coming off their most-competitive game of the season, a 2-1 overtime loss at home to UC Davis last Friday. The teams square off at 1 p.m. at Longwood's Athletics Complex.
The Lancers are 2-4 overall and 0-1 in the MAC after dropping their conference opener, 2-1, to Miami (Ohio) last weekend.
The Chippewas are beginning defense of their regular-season MAC championship, but that isn't what's at the forefront, Pelowski said.
"I tend to be more in the moment and try to not talk a ton about what happened last year," she said. "Last year was awesome, but this is a completely different team. This is a different year, this is a different opponent."
While its been a struggle, and at times very frustrating, through the first seven games of the season, Pelowski said she has liked her team's fire and that should serve it well going forward.
"We could have quit," she said. "We could have hung our heads and said we're not getting any wins.
"We learned how to fight in that UC Davis game. It was a nice tight fun game to play in. It totally gets us ready to gain some confidence and being able to execute our style of play against a good opponent.
"We gained a lot of confidence along the way with our hard work with our penalty-corner conversions. We're doing some nice things defensively, executing some good (outlet passing) against UC Davis. We're starting to put pieces together; we just have to put them all together in the same game."
It will be CMU's second consecutive one-game weekend and it is also the Chippewas' last road game for nearly four weeks.
The Chippewas play host to Pacific on Oct. 1, the first of six straight home matches.
