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  CHRIS BACKLEY/Daily Bruin Shawn Nakamura, the field hockey coach, teaches the team essential points in the sport.

By Michael Sneag

Daily Bruin Contributor

Gaining attention and notoriety can be a hard thing to do for a club team at UCLA. Even getting practice time on a field at the moment requires incredible diplomatic skills. For now, the UCLA women’s field hockey team is quite content to focus on the simple things. Rather than worrying about wins and loses, the players are simply working on becoming a team and organizing themselves into a unit that they can be proud of.

The team is full of energy and enthusiasm and much of it can be attributed to the fact that the team recently acquired the talent of a coach. Shawn Nakamura, a third-year transfer student recently volunteered for coaching duties and has been a big boost for the team. Nakamura has coaching experience in all levels of field hockey ranging from youth leagues to a stint as an assistant for the Berkeley team in 1999, a Division I program at the time.

“He has been perfect for us, and he is exactly what we need,” junior captain Melissa Lorang said. “He has a lot of experience. He is laid back enough to make us feel comfortable while at the same time strict enough to make us work and really help us improve our skills.”

Interest in the team has been high this year. The team has existed for four years and has always fielded competitive teams, but this year, with the help of Lorang and Nakamura, there is a real feeling of cohesion and structure.

“Things are looking good,” Nakamura said. “We are definitely improving. We have a good mix on the team with a lot of girls returning from last year, some freshmen and even some girls that have never played before, but the enthusiasm really is there.”

The emphasis is on learning, improving and gaining experience as a team. On a recent trip to Santa Barbara, the team went 1-2, beating Cal Poly 1-0 behind a goal from Lorang, before losing two very close games to Haverford and Santa Barbara. The team played all three games with only 10 players and no substitutions, while all three teams fielded a full 11 with multiple substitutions.

The team travels to to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo this weekend to play in a three-team tournament. The following weekend, they will, once again travel to Santa Barbara, where they will compete in the fourth annual Santa Barbara Field Hockey Club Sports Championships, a two-day affair on Nov. 10-11, which concludes the fall season.

The team resumes play during the spring season, which starts in March. The spring games are played on turf at Moorpark College as opposed to grass, making it a much faster paced game, and giving the Bruins a wider variety of teams to play against, something useful for a team eager to learn and gain experience.

“So far the experience has been fun,” Nakamura said. “The girls want to learn and have fun doing it and there is not much more I can ask.”

Anybody interested in the team should contact Melissa Lorang at melissal@ucla.edu for more information.