DIVISION III: KARVOSKI EMBARKING ON HOMERIC QUEST FOR HENDRIX

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Ellie Karvoski, head coach of the field hockey team at Hendrix College, will typically tailor her recruitment pitch to suit the particular potential applicant. More often than not, she will touch on the school's new Odyssey program.

"I'll stress the academics," says Karvoski, a graduate of Northwestern University. "The Odyssey program is tailored to each individual, and it enables students to think outside of the box."

The curriculum and its very name are a perfect metaphor, for what Karovski has been attempting to do for the last two years has been Homeric as well as very outside-the-box.

That's because Hendrix, a Division III liberal arts school located in Conway, Ark, has begun to offer field hockey as a varsity sport. The school planned and executed the construction of a new turf stadium to be shared by the field hockey and men's lacrosse teams as part of a massive upgrade in facilities, upkeep, and staff announced a few years ago.

"Our hockey facility is part of a $25 million investment in athletics," Karvoski says. "For a small school, something like this is amazing."

But there was a small matter of trying to assemble the field hockey team that would be playing in that park -- not an easy process since the closest scholastic varsity programs are some 300 miles away in Oklahoma City. The process has therefore been one of great care and diligence.

"We tried to recruit the kind of player who understands what it's like starting a new team," Karvoski says. "It's not for everybody; and you're going to have growing pains for a very, very long time."

When the roster was assembled in the fall of 2007, five of the 14 players had never played organized field hockey before.

And then, there was the matter of the opponents. Hendrix is located about 160 miles from its nearest competitor in the Southeast Collegiate Athletic Conference, Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. And as the only organized field hockey team in the state of Arkansas, every road trip would be taken out of state; heck, the program's inaugural matches took place after a flight to Ohio to take on Denison and Ohio Wesleyan.

Now, the Hendrix experiment is one of the boldest the sport of field hockey has made in the last 25 years, perhaps back to when Iowa began its NCAA varsity program. At least in Iowa, there had been organized scholastic field hockey in the state before.

But in Arkansas, you are very hard-pressed to find any record of organized field hockey, whether in old yearbooks or in the post-Title IX boom of the mid-70s.

"No one knows the game who's lived in this state," Karvoski says. "It's really a challenge."

Despite the lack of history, there certainly has not been a lack of talent or desire found within the players who grew up in Arkansas. In fact, one of the great stories this year in college field hockey might be the development of Sally Cunningham, a converted soccer player from Little Rock. She has become a stalwart on the backline for the Warriors.

"She's picked up the game very, very quickly," Karvoski says of the junior. "She's become one of my better players already after a few weeks of practice."

That's why the final won-loss record at Hendrix for 2007 will be less important than the brimming optimism of the first season.

"I'm extremely pleased at how competitive they have been right from the beginning," Karvoski says. "The players believe they are not too far behind, and if you ask them, they'll tell you they've been exceeding their expectations."

Karvoski knows it will be a long time before the game of field hockey will evolve from an exotic extracurricular activity into a passion amongst the state's girls and women. That being said, she already has some plans in place to grow the game.

"There's potential for private schools in the area," she says. "It'll take some time. And Sally has become a big advocate, and absolutely loves the sport."

Karvoski has certainly done her homework when it comes to recruiting. She has made numerous trips to national tournaments in the years before her first practice. She made home visits while visiting family in Connecticut. And she also has some areas she would like to target for recruiting over the next few years, excitingly ticking them off like an aviator's checklist.

"In the near future, I think we can get players from Calfornia, and St. Louis, and Colorado," she says. "I can always tap into Connectifut, but I think we can also work our way into Virginia and Maryland."

At one time, the youngsters Karvoski was able to approach at national tournaments were more curious than anything else when wearing Hendrix polo shirt and cap.

But perhaps, one day, some of those curious players will embark on their own odyssey -- right in the middle of Arkansas.