Returning players give Spartans bright future

Although the 2008 MSU field hockey team might have been only inches away from the NCAA Final Four, the team looks like it could be miles ahead of the competition for 2009.

This year’s team, which made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, was just a missed penalty corner short of heading to the third Final Four in school history.

That fits right into head coach Rolf van de Kerkhof’s philosophy of building the program. The goal, he said, is to get better every season and every game.

“If you look back at (the season), we grew every game this season; we became better and a stronger team throughout the season,” van de Kerkhof said. “We started playing our best hockey at the end of the regular season, and I think we played our best hockey in postseason play.”

The team advanced one game further this season than it did last year, when the team made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since making the Final Four in 2004. Next season it could do even better.

The team is losing only three seniors, which is paltry in comparison to a team like Big Ten champions Iowa, who will be losing eight players after this season.

“We’ve been working for three years now to build this team to where it is now,” senior forward Michelle Ciliberti said. “It’s just every day we got better as a team and every day we improved. It’s taken a while, but we’re building momentum and before you know it we’ll be in the Final Four.

“They’ll be a very strong team. We’ve got very good underclassmen, our juniors are very strong. Hopefully next year they can do the same thing we did this year.”

The team is returning four of its top five scorers and 10 of 13 starters and has strong help rising in the backfield to take the place of departing senior Geraldine Raynor.

“I see nothing but good things for this team,” Raynor said. “It’s going to be a strong team and they have a lot of good girls coming in.”

The team’s youth this season will be able to step up into key positions, as next year the team again will be lead by three seniors: midfielders Floor Rijpma and Jeamie Deacon and goalkeeper Elissa Unger.

Rijpma has 36 goals and 86 points during her career, which puts her in seventh place in MSU history for both categories. Deacon has 24 goals and 67 points in her two years at MSU. Unger will be beginning her third full season in the cage for the Spartans, with nine shutouts in 45 games and two straight seasons of a goals-against average below 1.40.

“The future looks bright,” van de Kerkhof said. “I’m very thankful for the three seniors. They helped us to be good captains. Every year our senior classes have set the tone to do better the following year.

“We look better for next year because of what we did this year. So we have a solid foundation to start off on in the offseason.”