Engineering the perfect balance
10/30/2009 1:00:00 PM | Field Hockey
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Why is senior Lindsey Smith permitted to miss the entire field hockey off-season? Smith is one of a handful of Lehigh student-athletes who plays two sports spanning two seasons: field hockey and lacrosse. The time commitment for one sport alone is astounding, but two? You have to admit, that’s pretty incredible.
Lehigh field hockey head coach Julie Mazer said Smith is the only two sport athlete currently on the team because of the difficulty of participating in athletics for two seasons.
“It’s getting increasingly difficult to play two sports because the offseason has become such an integral part of the team’s development,” Mazer said.
Which does she enjoy more? Smith said it depends on when you ask her.
“When I’m in field hockey season I enjoy field hockey more and when I’m in lacrosse, I’ll say lacrosse. They both have different aspects that I like so doing both provides the perfect balance,” Smith said.
Speaking of balance, throw all of that commitment in with a major in Integrated Business and Engineering, more commonly known as IBE, and you have one impressive student.
How, exactly, does Smith do it?
“Time management,” she said. “I learned that pretty quickly freshman year.” A standard response for a student-athlete at Lehigh, but most of those athletes are not in season for eight months out of the year.
When she’s not in season during the summer months, Smith plays in a club field hockey league close to her home in Downingtown, Pa. She plays with her sisters, who, interestingly enough, she has also played with at Lehigh. Her older sister, Christy Smith ’08, was part of the reason she chose to come to Lehigh, besides the fact that the Mountain Hawks would let her play in two sports.
“I had the opportunity to share the field with her,” Smith said. “And we have grown up playing together. She’s obviously been extremely successful here, so she’s always kind of been my role model to look up to and emulate and achieve some of her success.”
Now, however, she has the chance to be a role model for her younger sister, Carly, who is a freshman on the Lehigh field hockey team.
Mazer said that the level of competition now and the skill level of both the team and the league is different from the level four years ago, when Lindsey was a freshman and Christy was a junior. Are there any similarities that run through the family?
“I think she’s [Lindsey’s] a different player than both of her sisters,” Mazer said. “They all have speed across the board but I think they are just different players in some ways so it has been interesting. Because they’re sisters, they are very close so when they’re playing with each other on the field, they seem to know where the other one is going to be.”
The most striking similarity, according to Mazer, is their speed. Lindsey ran winter track in high school and Mazer said all three sisters possess phenomenal speed.
“I think that’s a family trait,” she said.
Lindsey and Christine were the first sisters that Mazer had the opportunity to coach and she said it’s interesting to see the similarities that come from growing up together, but they are all very different people. Currently, there is one other pair of sisters on the team, senior Julie Kuhns and her sister, freshman Millie.
Smith is also a game captain for the field hockey team this season, along with juniors Lilia Stefaniwsky and Jessica Miller. This year, Lindsey has taken on a new role acting as the speaking captain on the field.
Mazer said that Smith is a ‘lead by example’ type of athlete.
“She has high expectations for herself and I think she’d do anything for her teammates and anything for her team to help us win,” Mazer said.
“She’s the most experienced player on the field right now,” Mazer said. “She’s been a mainstay in our midfield for her entire career here.”
Besides being explosive on the field, Smith also participates in various leadership programs through the athletics office and has been honored with various awards. She is a SAM (Student Athlete Mentors) Mentor and Mazer said that Smith is part of the Leadership Academy and the Leadership Legacies Program.
All of this, of course, ties in to the fact that Smith devotes an unbelievable amount of time to Lehigh athletics.
Smith said the best part is that she always has two groups of people to hang out with and two different groups of friends from the outset. Constantly being in season, for Smith, means there is the constant excitement of games.
Smith has a great outlook despite the fact that she will be graduating in May, “It’s sad to think that field hockey is almost over. It kind of scares me a little and that’s the beauty of playing lacrosse, I get to do it all over again,” she said.
Lehigh enters the final weekend of the regular season at 6-9 overall and 2-2 in the Patriot League. Smith and the Mountain Hawks will wrap-up the regular season on Sunday when they travel to American for a key Patriot League showdown. Lehigh can clinch a Patriot League tournament berth with a win over the Eagles or a Holy Cross loss to Bucknell on Saturday. Sunday’s game gets underway at 2 p.m. from Jacobs Field in Washington, D.C.
Story written by Rachel Sachs ’10
