"No Such Thing as Can't"

Ask field hockey coach Mary Corrigan Twyman what her favorite word is, and she'll probably say "poise." She stresses it to her team, with a capital "P." Dressed in a tweed jacket and green corduroy knickers as she promenades the sidelines, Twyman looks more like she ghould be strolling along Fifth Avenue than coaching field hockey in the wilds of New Hampshire. But there are those moments, usually shorter than the click of a camera,, when she relaxes turning to her assistant, Josie Harper, to smile after a Green goal, or yelling out, "Come on, Allison," to a player. The combination poise interspersed with mo- ments of relaxation was one of the reasons the Big Green field hockey team came out on the top of the Ivy League in 1984.

Dartmouth had every reason to lose its poise in the final game of the season, at Princeton. After starting out 4-0 in the League, Twyman's team had fallen to Brown the previous week. When the Princeton game began with an early 1-0 deficit, the ghosts of 1983, when Dartmouth had lost two of its final three Ivy matches to miss out on a League title, were dancing before the team. But they didn't find a partner in the 1984 Green, as juniors Allison Barlow, Kelly Robertson, and Nicki Demakis all scored goals to give Dartmouth an Ivy title and Twyman one of her happiest moments in coaching since she came to Dartmouth from her native Ireland in 1974 as the fourth coach of a women's sport at the College.

"This was a very special year because we overcame a major barrier, and we will have a lot of seniors coming back who have experienced both the good side and the bad side," Twyman said.

It was also a season when Twyman overcame a personal barrier while maintaining the emphasis on poise, loosening things up a bit. "We really had a closeness as a team, and I may have relaxed a little," Twyman said. "There was more levity and liveliness, which I had been trying to work on for two years, and there was a closer relationship with the players for me. People have to learn when to let down for five minutes and still be able to come back and work as hard as before."

Beth Snell, one of the 1984 tri-captains, came back after missing almost all of the 1983 season with a broken hand to win the"Most Valuable Player" award in 1984 for her defensive work at halfback. Without a doubt, this season was her best, and part of the positive feeling she takes away came from Twyman. "I came back psyched to play this year and thinking we could go far, and Mary came back more positive than ever, too," Snell said. "She really worked on us having the right mental attitude, and she was always aware of our needs and helping the team."

This is no Cinderella story, however. Twyman did not become the coach she is right now due to the tap of a magic wand.

A top player in her own right, Twyman was chosen for the Irish national team in 1972 and would have gone to New Zealand for the world championship had she been able to get a release from a new job at the time. To get to that peak, however, she had to go through some changes that meant a lot of mental work on her part. Until her second year at Ling College in Dublin, she was always on the attack, a forward, despite the fact that her father joked her speed was more suited to a halfback. Her lack of foot speed helped her develop brain speed, she says, but playing forward also made her tense as a player, a problem which often resulted in missed goals. When she did make the switch to the back line, her attitude changed, and it was then that she came to realize what poise means in a field hockey contest and how much it would have helped her on the front line.

The mental changes weren't complete, though. Her skills continued to increase but she had to work on becoming more competitive. She made the team's success a premium and found herself with the attacking instinct again. Still, even today she doesn't care for the "win or tomorrow we die" attitude.

"My feeling was always that I just wanted to play," Twyman said. "If I go out to play tennis now, I'll be content to just hit for two hours, while most people want to hit for a while and then have to play a game."

Her Irish heritage played a major part in the creation of this attitude. Twyman grew up in an area where athletics were encouraged from an early age, but it was nothing like Pop Warner football or Little League baseball. When she came to Dartmouth, she was asked to supply the records for the championship teams she had played for. Small problem. They don't usually keep records in Irish field hockey.

"The attitude toward sports is reflective on the two societies," Twyman said of the difference between America and Ireland. "American society puts the emphasis on the outcome and on tangible results. In Ireland, the doing is what is important, and the values of society are placed on having a good time. Some of my most memorable games have been losses."

Once every three years, Twyman takes the Big Green field hockey team back to Ireland for a pre-season tour of the Emerald Isle. The experience between the lines has invariably led to a quick start once the Green gets back to the States and into its schedule. But it's what happens off the field that leaves the deepest imprint on the team. It also makes Twyman smile as she sees her players come to grips with an entirely different approach to the game, the one she grew up with.

"We never did a group warmup. We would just show up five minutes before the game, stretch the right leg once, stretch the left leg once, and then go into our individual routines," Twyman said. Seeing this type of warmup, or watching an Irish player pull up to a game five minutes beforehand, snuff out a cigarette, and head onto the field, has an amusing effect on the American players. Another funny scene invariably occurs when the Green players, who stay with the families of their Irish counterparts, want to leave an hour before game-time and wind up treading holes in carpets until their hosts are ready to pull out ten minutes before the faceoff.

With all the changes she has made in her mental approach to the game, it is no wonder that Twyman has begun to study this aspect of the game more and more in passing years. "In the early years, I was more of a teacher," Twyman said. "But when you play every game versus strong opponents, or you're trying to go undefeated in the Ivy League, you have to deal with the mental aspects more. It has been a real challenge that I have had fun with."

She has also had a chance to pass on her knowledge of the game. Dartmouth has used a just-graduated player in recent years as the junior varsity coach and as the second varsity assistant. This season, Paula Joyce '84, the 1983 co-captain and one of the best players in Dartmouth field hockey and ice hockey history, held that role. "I enjoyed coaching more than I did playing," Joyce said. "I learned a lot. Mary opens your mind to a lot of different things and helps with the psychological aspect."

Beneath it all, however, lie the old Irish ideals of making the game fun and of playing the game in order to improve as a person. "My philosophy is to try and see each player reach her potential," Twyman explained. "I would be happier if no one cared about our end-of-the-season record, and it's more important to play the best possible schedule, even if you go 2-10. No one will remember the game where you beat someone 7-0, but the game where we tied UCONN [then ranked first in the nation] will stick."

One thing is certain. It is not fun to play against a Twyman-coached team. Her overall record in 11 seasons is 81-48-19, and even more daunting is her record of 24-9-3 in the Ivies since the inception six years ago of League-sanctioned play in field hockey.

"Mary's teams play good, clean, hard hockey," said Pennsylvania's Anne Sage, the only Ivy field hockey coach with more seniority than Twyman. "Her teams are always very competitive on the field, but as an opposing coach she's very fair. I feel we operate under the same code of sportsmanship, and that's important today."

Josie Harper, who is entering her fourth year as head women's varsity lacrosse coach, probably knows Twyman as a coach better than anyone. Harper assists Twyman in the fall with field hockey, and Twyman handles the assistant's duty for Harper when lacrosse season rolls around. "Mary's strengths are game strategy and the teaching of basic skills," said Harper. "We have a very good working relationship because our styles are very different and we complement each other."

From the self-styled "brash and confident" young woman who first left Ireland in the late sixties to go to the University of Massachusetts for graduate work, to the coach who produces League-winning teams, it has been a gradual metamorphosis.

At the same time, Twyman has seen the game of field hockey grow up around her. Where there was only a world championship which was invisible to most people in her playing days, there is now a field hockey competition in the Olympics which gained a lot of attention due to a strong U.S. entry in 1984. And since Twyman came to the College, there has been an overhaul of the game and of women's sports in general at Dartmouth. "I think the single biggest change in women's sports is the commitment of the athletes to their sports and their understanding of what that commitment entails," Twyman said. She also points out that it is harder for field hockey players today, because the large number of good teams and a tough Dartmouth schedule make it impossible for the players to let up for even one game. One change which has had .nothing but positive benefits is the creation of the Ivy League. "Being in the League really helps, because before 1979, it was hard to work toward a goal," Twyman said. "It's exciting being in the League, and the primary goal of the kids is to be at the top."

Not one to be satisfied with the status quo, Twyman points out that there is room for improvement in her sport and in all sports which are not very visible. A lot of people missed out on her Ivy champions this year, just as not too many people saw senior Jim Sapienza, one of the best athletes in Big Green history, mastering the fairways of the Hanover Country Club for the Dartmouth cross-country team. "The area that development is possible in is public recognition of sports that aren't traditional in either a Dartmouth or an Americasense," Twyman said. "If we can encourage the fans to enjoy two teams in equal competition that shows skill, intensity, and spirit, no matter what the sport, and get those fans to enjoy and share in the success of non-traditional sports, then we will be making progress."

In a hidden line in the corner of Twyman's faded resume from 1974, the response to the statement "The individual who has made the most significant impact on your coaching career" is "Nora Smith." Twyman played for her and played against her and calls her "a great player even though she was only 5'2"." But that isn't why Twyman was inspired by her. The reason for that is six words long: "She always said, 'There's no such thing as can't.'

The intensity she calls it poise that coach Maty Twyman brings to Dartmouth fieldhockey, showing here as she talks with the team, was one of the factors which helped herlead her squad to the 1984 Ivy League championship.

Frank Cicero, a senior from Scarsdale, N.Y.,is an administrative intern in the Sports Information Office.