All About Field Hockey

What have I been doing for the past two weeks? Well ...

By James Patrick

Special to the Valley News

DURHAM, N.H. — The scene before a game in the University of New Hampshire field hockey team's locker room is a familiar one to the Upper Valley.

Instigated by Kyle Lyons and Whitney Frates, a duo from Kimball Union Academy, the college players have a ritual to get psyched up for a game. They turn on the song, “Hey Baby,” by D.J. Otzi. If you've ever been to a high school football game, you've probably heard the school band belt out its version of the original, “Hey! Baby.”

Otzi's version has a faster pace.

“Hey, hey baby. I want to know, if you'll be my girl,” the women in the locker room belt out. A circle forms. Somebody dances a little jig in the middle while teammates clap.

Whatever works. The Wildcats are 17-4 and won last weekend's America East tournament to earn their first spot in the NCAA tournament since 2000. New Hampshire plays Michigan at 2 p.m. today at the University of North Carolina's stadium.

With four former KUA players, the University of New Hampshire has taken plenty from Meriden, and not just pregame rituals.

Frates is the team's second-leading scorer with 22 goals and 11 assists while Lyons is No. 3 with seven goals and eight assists. Freshman Kellie Joyce has started every game and made the conference's all-rookie team while older sister Mackenzie Joyce has been a regular off the bench, when she's healthy.

Sue Halliday, a teacher and field hockey coach at KUA, has been following the success of her former players on the Internet, which led her to find a video of the team performing its pregame song in the locker room. That would be the same song they used to play before KUA's games.

“I had to laugh,” Halliday said. “I had to ask another person if it was the same song they used to sing here, just to make sure.”

Credit Lyons with the assist on the song migrating to Durham. Or Frates. Nobody's really sure.

“We've been doing that for a couple of years now,” Frates said. “It gets people pretty excited.”

Frates has been exciting since growing up in Woodstock. At KUA, Frates set the career points record with 73 goals and 40 assists. Her senior year, she set the single-season points record with 31 goals and 25 assists and was named to the All-America second team.

Things haven't really changed. Frates was named a second team All-American in her junior year last season when she scored 11 goals and eight assists. Her 2.75 points per game average this year is tied for fourth best in the nation.

New Hampshire coach Robin Balducci isn't surprised by the success, noting that field hockey success is in Frates' genes. She had aunts play field hockey at Penn State and Boston College. Her sister, Crystal, played at Boston College. Her grandmother played field hockey.

That pedigree was part of what brought Balducci to scout KUA games. That's where Halliday got ahold of Balducci and told her she had to check out Lyons.

“I told her, 'You don't know what you're getting with Kyle,' ” Halliday said.

That's because her field hockey skills weren't fully developed yet. Lyons was playing ice hockey and lacrosse at KUA and hadn't focused on a particular sport. At Hartford High School, she had also played softball.

“I always knew I wanted to go on playing sports in college, the question was which one,” Lyons said.

What Balducci could see on those prep school fields was raw athleticism. What Balducci couldn't see was that Lyons, like Frates, has a pedigree. Lyons is the daughter of former Dartmouth football coach John Lyons, who is now the defensive coordinator at UNH. She knows a thing or two about dedicating herself to improving at a sport.

“Kyle wasn't on anybody's radar,” Balducci said.

As a freshman, Lyons was a walk-on with no scholarship. She made the America East all-conference first team in 2010 and 2011.

Conversely, Mackenzie and Kellie Joyce, sisters from South Pomfret, were on Balducci's radar from birth. Balducci is a longtime friend of their parents, Deane and Elizabeth Joyce.

When it came time to look for a place to play college field hockey, it was a simple choice for both of the Joyces.

“I'd been going to camps here and this was just where I knew I wanted to go,” Mackenzie, a sophomore, said. “Because of camp I knew most of the people here already.”

“I had a bunch of meetings with my school counselor,” Kellie, a freshman, said. “He said, 'Go to the place you love the most and where you're the most comfortable,' and that was here.”

In Kellie's freshman season at KUA, the prep school won its first of three straight New England Prep School Athletic Council championships. It was the lone year at KUA that all four future UNH players played together at KUA.

On Thursday, standing together under shelter at a Durham train station next to their rain-deluged practice field, the KUA graduates were quick to point back to Halliday for getting them here. Halliday was the head coach that won three straight NEPSAC titles before backing into an assistant coaching role this season. The players' heads nodded as they agreed that Halliday was a key to their success.

“She kept it simple to understand,” Lyons said.

“She had a huge impact on us,” Frates added.

“She was great,” Mackenzie Joyce said.

Halliday must have been doing something right. KUA is a secluded school of around 325 students. UNH has just four players from Vermont — all from KUA. Even the University of Vermont has just five players from Vermont, from four different high schools.

“It's very unusual,” Balducci said. “You often have trends where kids come from the same school over the course of time, maybe one's a senior and another's a freshman, but I've never had them play all at the same time.”

Halliday isn't prone to excitement, her players say with a laugh, but she gets fired up when she talks about her UNH players. She was hunting for email addresses Wednesday night so she could wish the players well in their upcoming NCAA tournament game.

She's just that happy for her former players.

“I know when I coached them how much they loved the game,” Halliday said. “They are where they wanted to be eight years ago. This is what they spent so long working for.”

Their work has New Hampshire with a decent chance of earning just its third win in the NCAA tournament. Michigan (14-6) is the eighth-ranked team in the nation. Awaiting the winner of Saturday's game will likely be North Carolina, the top-ranked team in the country.

There are at least a couple of reasons for the Wildcats to have high hopes. The Tar Heels needed double-overtime to beat Michigan 4-3 on Oct. 23. If the Wildcats can get by the Wolverines, you just never know, they figure. It's only a 16-team tournament.

And after all, they've already won a few tournaments.

“We knew we'd go far with the success we'd had (at KUA),” Frates said. “Before that, the last time we won a championship was in high school.”

Balducci smiles when she thinks about what the scene will be Saturday in Chapel Hill, N.C. The locker room. The music. The singing. The clapping.

“It's their posse,” Balducci said, referring to the seniors from KUA.

It's also a scene she wouldn't mind seeing a few more times this season.