AN APPRECIATION

Missy Bruvik, head coach, Princeton Stuart Country Day School (N.J.)

One in an occasional series.

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Missy Bruvik is the Pete Carril of American scholastic field hockey.

But that's not because both plied their trade in the shadows of the stone towers of Princeton University, or because of their cerebral attitudes towards the game.

Instead, it's because Bruvik, like Carril, annually got more out of less than any coach in America in their sport.

Missy Bruvik is leaving Stuart after some 20 seasons at the helm. She will remain with the 2007 team in a limited role, helping new head coach Katie Grant (one of only 20 players in the history of high school hockey to record 50 goals in a season) and the rest of the new staff while she makes plans to see daughter Kelly through her four years at Bucknell.

To understand Bruvik's achievements, consider the resume. Her Tartans won five straight New Jersey Independent Schools Athletic Association Prep "B" championships for smaller schools between 1991 and 1995. The team also won a pair of state championships in the late 90s and early 00s when large and small schools shared a single bracket. The field hockey team won its first Mercer County Tournament championship in 1995 and followed it up with three championships in the 00s. The school also sent numerous athletes to Division I schools, and even sent goalkeeper Gia Fruscione to the U.S. women's national team pool.

But you also neet to consider the size of the school. The population is about 540 from kindergarden through 12th grade, and the 2007 senior class was a mere 38 students.

Think about it, folks. Stuart is a tiny school in comparison to its peers. Across the river in Pennsylvania, for example, Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite, a perennial District 3-AA powerhouse, has about 540 students in its high school.

Now, there are very small field hockey-playing schools in small villages in states where home-rule ethics have created some very overmatched athletic teams. Other small charter and magnet schools have the sport as well.

But no school with a population as small as Stuart has had the success Missy Bruvik had in her coaching career. The run of success in the county began with the 1995 championship game which saw the Tartans play a goalless draw against a very good Hamilton Nottingham (N.J.) team.

That year, Fruscione, one of the better goalkeepers this country has produced, was a stalwart in the cage over 80 minutes. She had played the previous week in another double-overtime match which had to go to the seventh round of a 25-yard shootout tiebreaker.

Over the years, Stuart's teams had strong personalities, players with different levels of talent and desire, players with learning disabilities, and even one who played the game with the urgency of someone who might have been playing the final match of her life. Throughout, Bruvik showed herself to be an impeccable manager of people and talents -- win or lose.

Bruvik's teams were supposed to be overmatched; the school's field hockey team played large regional public schools with populations up to 20 times its own, competed well, and often beat them.

How did they do this? There are a couple of things that Bruvik did that very of her peers did in the coaching box. First of all, she used visualization techniques to get her players to forget about the possibility of losing and to remain confident in their abilities.

But years before there was a movement called "Positive Coaching," Bruvik was the embodiment of it. She never denigrated an opponent, never spoke disapprovingly to her players or coaches, and always took positives away from every game.

Even in a dusky afternoon after her team lost the 1996 Prep "B" championship game due to a string of questionable umpiring decisions, she showed a positive attitude, one which was contagious to the entire team.

It's something that will be missed.