In May 2005, USA Field Hockey hired Lee Bodimeade. Their objective in hiring the former silver medalist from Australia (1992) was to qualify for the Olympic Games after they had narrowly missed in 2000 and 2004. As an excellent teacher of specific skills, Lee took a squad of young players and has turned the program around.

Field Hockey has struggled in the last couple of years, but we have seen a huge turn-around in the program this year with stunning victories over Argentina (one of the top five teams in the World). How did you turn the program around? The key points to lifting our performance was a process that we wanted to keep as simple as possible. The reason for keeping it simple is ease of implementation and then being able to continue with. We had four key areas that we concentrated on: 1. Identify our playing style (what is USA's way of playing?) 2. Emphasis on player depth 3. Improvement of basic skills to international level 4. Compete against the world’s top 4 teams This is broad description but all aspects of our training feeds into these categories. What do you see as the key component to changing a team’s culture? One key was providing the players with structure on and off the field that was conducive to success. With the squad embracing this, they believed in what I was selling them and could therefore commit to achieving their best. Change doesn’t happen overnight, how long did it take you to change the team culture? Team culture was already present in the team when I came into the group. It is a culture that developed over numbers of years competing, all I did was to get them to recognize this culture and then develop it to be the foundation of where we are heading. We become very protective of this culture and anyone coming in to the group had to embrace it to the level that is required to remain a part of the group. Give us a one-day snap shot of a Field Hockey workout. 8:00 Warm up 8:30 Begin training, basic skills development, general play/positioning drills 9:45 Set plays 10:00 Cool down 3:00 Warm up 3:30 Running program 4:15 Small games, goal shooting 5:30 Cool down What are you most pleased with concerning the direction of your team? The way that the players have embraced the direction that we are trying to take them in. This has certainly made our structure consistent and has also spread up the level of performance. What are the next steps that you see to improve field hockey in America? The higher we climb in the world rankings, the more finite we need to be in our skill development, tactical awareness and purposeful goal setting. Our training does not have to shift in focus too much, but we will need to be more advanced in our thinking and skill level. What was the most important piece of advice that was given to you as a coach? Being relatively new to coaching at the highest level, there has been an overload of tips and advice which I have been able to take on board, but the one thing that I will always remember being told is that "If you win, it is due to the players. If you lose, it is the coaches’ fault”. Reminding myself of this has prepared me for anything that comes forward. Excerpted from USOC Olympic Coach E-Magazine Fall 2007