One by one, every SU player walked off the turf of J.S. Coyne Stadium, past the bleachers and toward Manley Field House. Except for Claire Cooke and Laura Graziosi. Besides Charlotte de Vries, Syracuse has struggled to score — the star freshman has seven of the 14 team goals. Determined to reverse that trend, the two stayed after practice on Sept. 11.

Cooke and Graziosi stood around the cage closest to the scoreboard, slapping passes to one another and practicing penalty corners. Graziosi stood near the perimeter of the penalty circle as Cooke fired her pass after pass. For about five minutes, the two tried to perfect the set piece.

“Everyone is aware of [the dependance on Charlotte],” junior Carolin Hoffmann said. “We know we have to get other people scoring.”

The Orange, following Roos Weers’ (11 goals in 2018) graduation, lost nearly 50% of their scoring from last year. With a desperate need for more goals, de Vries filled the void as a top-10 class of 2019 recruit by MAX Field Hockey.

Her presence has proved successful thus far, but through the first six games, no one else has succeeded in the same way — only five players other than de Vries have scored this season. Now, entering conference play, Syracuse (5-1) must find other attacking options if it hopes to tally marquee wins against No. 1 North Carolina, No. 2 Duke or No. 5 Virginia.

SU head coach Ange Bradley has emphasized finding other options in practice since the Orange’s 2-1 loss to unranked Cornell on Sept. 7. Cooke and Graziosi spent extra time after practice, an attempt to improve so that SU won’t miss the NCAA tournament for its second-straight year.

“[de Vries] is not just the only player in our forward line,” Graziosi said. “If they close her off, know that there’s different spaces and we can utilize those spaces.”

In that loss to Cornell, de Vries was doubled and sometimes triple-teamed. The Big Red forced Graziosi, Cooke, sophomore SJ Quigley and junior Sarah Luby to initiate offense instead. When de Vries picked up the ball and tried to weave between defenders, the ball was poked away and sent down toward the Syracuse cage.

In the week leading up to the matchup with then-No. 14 St. Joseph’s on Friday, Bradley asked her team to focus on connecting passes and bringing the ball up from the midfield into the attack. She wanted them to see the open spaces and navigate away from defenders, instead of trying to deke them out with a skill move.

“It’s not one person,” Bradley said. “That’s never who we’ve been about. We just have to continue working on our connection link-up and be better at playing two-versus-one hockey.”

During their mid-week practice, the Orange worked on link-up play and the buildup to scoring chances in one half of the field. Graziosi, Cooke, Hoffmann and others had to figure out how to lure defenders out, make runs down to the end line and fire dangerous crosses into attackers standing near the cage — all things that de Vries usually does for the Orange.

In penalty corners and advantage situations, SU fired shot-after-shot at goalkeepers Syd Taylor and Sarah Sinck.

Another part of that process is reviewing video. Early in the week, Cooke said the Orange spent hours in the film room, trying to decipher how Graziosi and Hoffmann can play off de Vries instead of watching her try to beat the defense herself.

“We just have to find where the open space is,” Cooke said. “We were just playing through the middle of the field instead of trying to find where the open space is. That’s just reading it a little better than just giving her the ball and hoping that she’ll get through.”

Against St. Joseph’s, SU initially appeared to not have found a solution. Through regulation, de Vries had notched the only goal for the Orange off her back-hit. That changed in overtime. After Graziosi received the ball on a penalty corner, she took two assertive steps and whacked her stick at the ball, sending it flying into the back of the cage.

The goal gave the Orange their first top-25 win of the season. But it also showed progress toward a balanced offense centered around but not reliant upon de Vries.

For Graziosi, it was a sign that her post-practice drill two days prior had paid off.

Published on September 17, 2019 at 9:04 pm

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