CORNER OF THE MONTH

The 1-up

By Al Mattei

Founder, Top Of The Circle.com

Like the dive over right guard and the pick and roll, the "1-up" penalty corner is the easiest play in field hockey. And, as such, it is often the hardest to get right.

However, with proper timing and proper preparation, the 1-up is the corner which not only can lead to a score right away, it can also lead to numerous other plays.

If the flyer and trailer have to respect the blistering shooter from up top (blue arrow), then the shooter can dish off (purple arrows) to anyone else left open (red arrows). However, the key is to get the five members of the other team's corner defense to respect that laser shot.

This can only happen if the attack does its job, consisting of three seperate components:

1. Inserter: The inbounding of the ball needs to get done as quickly as possible. It does not necessarily have to hug the ground (unless playing on artificial turf), but it can't be a lazy ball.

2. Stick-stopper: Only a handful of high-school teams use a player to stop the ball at the top of the arc for the shot. However, they seem to do the best: Severna Park (Md.) and Newtown Council Rock (Pa.), for example. Having the striker stop the ball and send it towards goal is, in this day and age, a fool's errand. After all, it takes the best flyer less than two seconds to cover the 16-yard area between the end line and the top of the circle.

The stickstopper must have the stick skills and knowledge of when to stop the low bounce with a horizontal stick or the higher bounce with a vertical stick, like using a cricket bat to defend the wicket.

3. Striker: Can be a forward, midfielder, or a back, but must have a shot which is hard and low every single time. Countless key corners over the years have been called back because of shots which have been undercut to a dangerous height.

Without going too deeply into the details of how best to hit a field hockey ball, all it takes for a striker to be effective is to hit a low shot, on goal, with a reasonable pace.

Only good things can happen if the shot has all three characteristics: the shot can hit a defender's foot, the goalie may have to make a save, or the ball may go in the cage. A failure in any of them can send the ball wide, high, or straight into the waiting clutches of the corner defense unit.