Madison directs Cavs to top form

A little more than four years ago, Virginia’s field hockey program was one big mess.
So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Michele Madison’s number was quickly added to UVa’s speed dial. Madison, known in national field hockey circles as “Dr. Fix It,” was happy at Michigan State. Thought she would never leave. That is, until she received that call from Charlottesville.
What she found was that the Cavaliers were definitely a fixer-up-er and so the Good Doctor went to work.
This afternoon, Madison’s team will be playing in the Final Four, its fourth straight NCAA tournament.
No negativity
One doesn’t have to be a field hockey aficionado to completely understand what Madison accomplished. In fact, it is more than easy to admire her deeds and how she went about fixing what was clearly broken.
“They weren’t a team,” Madison said when asked what the program was like upon her arrival. “That’s what we started with first. There was a lot of negative energy. Not enough structure. I sensed it had previously been a free-for-all, that the kids ran the program. There wasn’t enough leadership and direction.”
Enough said.
First thing, Madison wanted to destroy the negativity so she established “obnoxiously positive” as the new team’s mantra. Players weren’t allowed to speak a negative word. If they did, they had to immediately say 10 positive things on the spot: “Faith, chaos, and obnoxiously positive.”
That’s the slogan they would eventually wear on their bracelets when they advanced to the NCAA tournament that first year under new energy.
Turning it around
It wasn’t easy. She lost players along the way, but the ones who remained craved discipline and direction, specialties of the new coach.
Her work actually began before she even stepped foot on Virginia’s campus. She sent instructions for the team to move out of its locker room.
“Locker rooms are for teams,” Madison said. “When we’re a team, we can use the locker room.”
Well, they didn’t move back in for quite some time, even longer than the coach anticipated, but she got her message across.
“It took a long time for them to realize that everyone has to pick up balls, that we’re in this together,” the coach said.
There was no doubt in Madison’s mind that she would get things turned around. Virginia is the perfect place to build a field hockey powerhouse. Good academics, decent weather, playing in the ACC (a field hockey stronghold that boasts three teams in the Final Four), were all ingredients to lure the nation’s best.
She had gotten the job done everywhere she had been as an assistant, then as a head coach at Temple and Michigan State. In fact, Madison is the only coach in collegiate field hockey history to take three different schools to the NCAA tournament.
A month into that first season, she saw tangible evidence that her system worked again. Virginia defeated North Carolina in Chapel Hill, making believers out of her players.
“They were in tears and crying and I was like, ‘Why are you guys crying? You just won.’ They said they hadn’t won an ACC game in their careers,” Madison recalled. “I told them, there’s no crying in field hockey.”
Next game, they lost to Boston U. and were crying again.
Madison couldn’t handle it.
“I told them that the captain can’t cry in front of the team,” the coach said. “If you’re going to cry, go into the bathroom and cry. They said I scarred them for life.”
This season, Virginia set a school record with 20 wins, 3 losses heading into today’s Final Four semifinal with North Carolina, a team the Cavaliers split with during two close games. Ranked and seeded No. 2, it has been a banner year, partly because Madison emphasized defense.
Maryland, the nation’s No. 1 team and the favorite to win the title, plays Princeton in the other semifinal.
Whatever happens, Madison likes what this team has done.
“To see those kids with the belief in their eyes, well, that’s why I coach ... for that very moment,” she said.
Certainly, the Cavs are believers.
“This tournament means everything to me,” said sophomore Rachel Jennings, a triplet who has a sister playing for Princeton. “It’s what you dream of since you start playing field hockey. If we can succeed it will be unreal, something I’ll never forget.”
That’s how goalkeeper Kim Kastuk, a junior, feels about today’s contest, too.
“I feel like I’m dreaming, kind of,” Kastuk said. “All our hard work has paid off. We’re so excited to go to the Final Four and compete. We have a golden opportunity to get this school’s first national championship in the sport. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Freshman midfielder Tara Puffenberger didn’t quite realize just how big a deal it was going to the Final Four in a sport that doesn’t catch the limelight often, but noted this has been an eye-opening experience.
“I didn’t really know what it was all about,” Puffenberger said. “Then after I saw all the TV cameras and sportswriters coming around, I realized it’s a huge deal. I said, ‘Whoa, maybe this is big.’ It’s one of the big accomplishments of my life.”
If Dr. Fix It has her way, it won’t be Puffenberger or Virginia’s last.
Every top 10 field hockey prospect in the country has sat on the couch in Madison’s office in recent months. She found it mind-boggling at first but now realizes they all want to come to UVa.
While her roster is fairly set for 2011 and 2012, she just booked a ticket to the “Hockey Festival,” an annual event with players on 25 fields from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for four days. Originally, she hadn’t planned on going this year because of the logjam of talent lined up for her program, but because kids want early decisions these days, she has to go do her homework.
“I have to get out there,” Madison said. “There are masses of kids that are interested in Virginia. It truly is mind-boggling. But I’m not complaining one bit.”