Robertson's club looking forward to battling conference heavyweights

In field hockey, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten are two of the sport's heavyweight conferences. Teams like Wake Forest, Penn State, Duke and Michigan are regulars to the NCAA Final Four. This year, IU hopes to be named among those giants of field hockey.\nCoach Amy Robertson's squad, while only a four-year-old program, has high hopes for this year's season. \n"Last year the girls began to realize they could really play on the same level of their competition," Robertson said. "There's nobody on the team you can watch from the sidelines and say 'she is better than anyone else.'"\nThe "competition" is nothing to deride -- IU had one of the toughest schedules in the nation last year. Coach Robertson's goal for the coming year is an NCAA berth, which will mean a significant increase in the win column. \nIU has only won 16 games during the last four seasons, including two Big Ten wins. Yet the team is returning all of its starters but three, including the entire midfield line. Robertson noted goalkeeper Molly Pulkrabek and captain Erica Nilsson as two players who will be missed, but she stressed the Hoosiers still have as much depth as anyone.\nWith the growth of players such as 2003 second-team All-American Kayla Bashmore and 2003 co-captain Leslie Wiler it would not be unreasonable to expect a Big Ten championship in 2005, according to Robertson.\n"The Big Ten has lots of parity," she insisted, mentioning Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State, Iowa and Ohio State as fierce conference competition.\nJunior midfielder Lesley Wiler will be another key player to watch in 2004, Robertson said. She remarked that Wiler is "the team's most savvy player" who tied for second in assists on 2003's squad, and also fired two game winning goals over the last two seasons. \n"We want to put wins on the board so that field hockey becomes more well-known at Indiana University," Wiler said.\nSophomore Jodi Murphy was one of only 21 players to be invited from around the nation to the United States Under-21 team. \n"I learned how to pick up my level of intensity when playing," Murphy said about the Under-21 team. "I played with girls who had been to the Final Four before and they put 110 percent into every play of every game." \nThe next step for Robertson's squad is to take the program to the NCAA tournament. A berth would be the first in the NCAA Tournament since they began field hockey at IU in 2000. \n"As long as we have confidence in ourselves and teammates," said Wiler, whose shooting resulted in a game-winning goal against Miami (OH) last season, "we should be one of the top teams in the NCAA in 2004." \nThe field hockey team will play its first home game Sept. 3 versus Ball State.\n-- Contact staff writer Andrew Shaffer at asshaffe@indiana.edu.