Sonja reports that U of L will be well represented in the U.S. Olympics in August, with Pam Bustin working with the U.S. field hockey team:
By Sonja
When Pam Bustin signed on to coach women’s field hockey at the University of Louisville in 1998, the team was playing on the equivalent of a cow pasture and had won only one game in 38 tries the previous two seasons.
Bustin, a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, was coaching the under-age-19 national team when she got the call from Associate Athletic Director Julie Hermann about an opening at U of L. With successful coaching experience at Hofstra, Michigan State and Temple, Bustin could have easily passed on the job to wait for an inevitable offer from the field hockey hotbed in the Northeast.
According to Louisville Magazine, what sold her was:
“Tom’s (Jurich) vision and Julie Hermann’s vision of what this department was heading for is what sold me,” Bustin says. “And I believed them because I hadn’t heard an administration speak with such conviction and such determination. . . . I was thinking, ‘What a place to build a program and establish myself as a head coach! This could be what we build.”‘
In 2006, year two of their Big East membership, U of L took a share of the regular season champion honors and earned a top seed in the league tournament. Her team compiled a 14-6 record before this season losing to Providence in the Big East tournament semifinals. One of her coups was hosting NCAA tournament action at Cardinal Park.
Bustin will be an assistant coach on the U.S. Olympics field hockey team in Beijing, China in August. Among the members of that team will be Barb Weinberg, a Male grad and an All-Big 10 honoree for three years at the University of Iowa.
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Bustin notes that the U. S. players will have to practice in masks because of the terrible air pollution in Beijing and that several world class players will not make the trip for the same reason. Gasp!
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