Latest headlines from Top Of The Circle Blog, covering sport, hockey, with clear attribution and direct links to the original publisher.
The run-in to this weekend’s National High School Invitational is one which doesn’t see a lot of change in our weekly rankings because there are fewer games by most of the participants leading into the weekend, given the fact that teams can play three or even four games at this weekend’s carnival of color, sound, […]
Today, we continue our look at the National High School Invitational as we feature the first half of Saturday, where an absolute panoply of games and matchups will be taking place. It will be difficult to pick just one from each window, believe me. 9 a.m. SaturdayGame to watch: Voorhees Eastern (N.J.) vs. The Christian […]
This Friday afternoon, at The Proving Grounds in Conshohocken, Pa., the opening pass-backs for the 2026 National High School Invitational will take place. Some 70 games will be taking place over three days, featuring 67 teams. They are from more than a dozen states, and will including public schools, private schools, parochial schools, a could […]
Yesterday, we saw several scores that saw legitimate Division I Top Five teams lose — and we’re not even a month into the 2026 field hockey season. The University of Michigan, which sent shockwaves throughout the field hockey universe with its Opening Day win over North Carolina, could manage only one penalty corner chance in […]
Welcome back to Statwatch, which is our weekly (some would say “weakly”) part of our site where we aim to bring together the past and the present of the grand game of field hockey through a statistical lens. We’ve harped on the statistical achievement of Yorktown Tabb (Va.), which has won its first four contests […]
File this under the “unexpected results” category. The quarterfinals of the FIBA World Cup of women’s basketball featured a lot of competitive pro players looking for a berth in the last four this weekend. One team that is a usual lock for a top-four slot is Australia, a nation which has regularly been on the […]
If you’ve already printed out your list of teams participating in the National High School Invitational next month, you may have noticed that a number of teams amongst the 67 invited teams are already playing each other at some point during the 2026 regular season. We pointed this out last year, with four major private-school […]
Here we go! From now until the Tuesday after the end of the field hockey season, this space will be giving you a weekly run-through of the 10 best field hockey teams in the country. Each of these teams will have great tests on the way to their respective league and state finals. But as […]
This weekend, the world of girls’ and women’s volleyball leaned in hard to something that has had the proof of concept in sports like basketball and ice hockey. Why not install a temporary court in a high-capacity stadium and make it an epic event? Marching bands, fireworks, smoke machines, the lot? Last Saturday in Dayton, […]
In sportswriting, I have been taught to avoid trite and overused phrases. One that has bristled on me over the years is the use of the tag “super,” which is a terribly wrought adjective. Another is the term “great,” which is a misused tag. The example that I have to tell myself is, “If (insert […]
Today, a handful of professional athletes, who attended training camps for teams in the National Football League, are now eligible to play college football. Huh? What’s going on here? Well, partially because the people running the NCAA opened the door a crack to allow players in many sports a fifth (if not sixth or more) […]
College sports in the United States have continuously confronted one question over the years: “Who to recruit?” After all, a student-athlete’s availability for any college team — whether it is revenue or non-revenue — is finite. Once a class graduates, the coaching staff is looking for another group of players to fill in, either from […]
Yesterday afternoon, it was announced that Li Yueru, a forward for the Dallas Wings who we tipped yesterday as a key player for China at the upcoming FIBA Women’s World Cup, would not be playing in the tournament. The reason: she does not have her passport, which was lost in the mail. There is so […]
Friday morning, the United States women’s national basketball team will step onto the court at Max Schmeling Hall to play the 20th FIBA Women’s World Cup. It is a championship which, up until last weekend, figured to have been a foregone conclusion for the U.S. team, which has not lost an international match at the […]
It’s hard to pin down exactly when the concept behind this site began. I think it was perhaps after a fit of boredom after leaving the dailies, when I had all of this regional and national knowledge of dozens of field hockey players, and I didn’t know exactly what to do with it. All I […]
