There will be no byes in this season’s upcoming NorPac Tournament. A first round bye is usually awarded to the top-seeded team in the conference, but not this year.

With UC Davis entering the NorPac, the conference now has four teams in the East and four in the West. And rather than seeding overall, the teams will be ranked within each division.

This year’s tournament shakeup means that even the top seeds will play in the first round, but for the first time in four years, that has no bearing on the Cal field hockey team.

For the first time since 2005, the Bears were denied the No. 1 seed in the conference. Friday’s 4-2 loss to Stanford allowed the Cardinal to clinch the division, and placed Cal securely in the No. 2 position.

The second-seeded Bears will face the No. 3-seed in the East—either Davidson or Appalachian State—in the first round of the tournament.

So there will be no bye—except for this week. (Click here to read more…)

I could have easily written three features with the information that Cal women’s field hockey coach Shellie Onstead gave me.

I wanted to keep a pretty tight focus on her Olympic quest, which unfortunately came at the expense of leaving out a truly fantastic story about her family’s Berkeley legacy. Thanks to this blog, however, I get the opportunity to share it with you. Ah, the miracle of the internet!

(Click here to read more…)