Most people call them routines. Religious zealots may call them rituals. But for an athlete, they are superstitions. Former Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs ate a chicken before every game. Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina practice shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform every game.

When the Syracuse field hockey team faces Villanova tonight at 7 and Lafayette on Sunday at 1 p.m., it will undoubtedly be sticking to the same routines, performing its own regular pregame rituals, and holding on to every superstition that has worked thus far in its current seven-game win streak.

‘If we eat at Goldstein,’ senior Lindsay Kocher said, ‘I’ll try to get the same thing, if I can remember what it is.’

The Orange is obviously a little less extreme than Boggs, but not too far behind Jordan. The team has some basic superstitions. Most of the players sit in the same seat in the locker room before warm-ups. Goalie Betsy Wagner wears the same white bandana for every game. Some of her teammates have consistent articles of clothing for games, too, but they take it to the next level.

Kocher has two orange headbands, one for practice and one for games – and she doesn’t wash them. Junior Paige Sullivan, a fashion design major, sports a wider orange headband with cow spots on it in every game. She has yet to introduce that piece to the washing machine during the current SU win streak.

Athletes will come up with new superstitions if they think it’s working, too. Kocher and Sullivan play different positions, but they are next to each other a lot more often than a forward and defender normally are. The two always eat their pregame meal together.

‘We happened to keep sitting next to each other,’ Kocher said, ‘so then we just made it a thing after that.’

Everyone has their own partner in pregame warm-ups, too. The Orange runs out in pairs and then splits up into groups for other drills. Each player is a part of the same group in the same part of the field for every game. Kocher and fellow senior Brittany Carriero have been running mates on their way to warm-ups for a while.

‘Ever since our freshman year,’ Kocher said.

Though Kocher admits to not knowing all of her teammates’ superstitions, she spoke about Jessica Dahle’s.

‘Dahle is the hairstylist,’ she said.

The junior defender always has a little something extra with her hair for every game, but she helps her teammates out as well. Kocher gets one braid and defender Jess Wreski gets two.

When Dahle is done getting everyone prim and proper and the team is ready for the opening whistle, it’s handshake time. But instead of using their hands, the players use their sticks. Dahle and Joanne Lombard have one that resembles what a standard ‘pound’ is with hands. But when they are across the field from each other, it resembles shooting a chain gun from ‘Terminator 2.’ Kocher and Nikki Wojton have something less violent, hitting the ground twice with the stick head before lifting and connecting them.

Whether it is braids or stick handshakes, it’s working for the Orange. Wreski and Wojton are in their first years starting and have played like Kocher – like four-year veterans.

‘They just stepped right in,’ Kocher said, ‘and filled the shoes like they’ve been doing it their whole lives.’

Published on October 6, 2004 at 12:00 pm