Last season, Hood, a Division III school, snapped a 47-game losing streak and captured the team's first win since the program's inception in 2005. This year, the Blazers are raising the bar.
After dropping the first two games, Hood has reeled off three consecutive wins, which is another first in school history. The optimism is growing, according to coach Curt Foxx.
"It really helps the program," Foxx said. "I think it helps the young guys get some confidence. … I told them we have the ability to be in every game this year. In years past, we had been blown out horribly, but through recruiting, developing some of these guys and the hard work they put in, we have the ability to be in every game. So we've tried to get them focusing on the fundamentals because when you win a game by one or two goals ort lose a game by one or two goals, then you can look at every possession and every mistake and really work on being a better team."
In back-to-back losses to Christopher Newport (14-8) and Gwynedd-Mercy (7-5), the Blazers committed more turnovers (32 to 27), collected fewer groundballs (58 to 74), won fewer face-offs (11 of 40), and finished with just a few more shots (71 to 66).
By comparison, in victories over Shenandoah (12-6), Penn State-Abington (20-0) and Washington & Jefferson (13-12 in overtime), Hood committed fewer turnovers (89 to 100), grabbed more groundballs (171 to 104), and won more face-offs (44 of 72). The offense took outshot its opponents, 126-72, and sophomore attackman Corey Roberts (Fallston) and junior attackman Domonique Shorter (Lansdowne) have registered eight goals and three assists and seven goals and two assists, respectively, during the Blazers' run.
"There's a team unity, and they're really working hard," Foxx said, also citing the play of freshman goalkeeper William Lane and freshman defenseman Doug Brisbane. "If you look at our statistics, we like to spread the ball around. We don't like to have one guy be the hero. We like everybody to score."
The rest of the season figures to get more challenging as Hood must still face Capital Athletic Conference foes Stevenson and Salisbury. Foxx said the team is staying positive, but realistic.
"We're not going to sit there and say we're going to get to double-digit wins or anything like that," he said. "We take it one game at a time. We're just focused on what's next. We forget about what happened. We make a mistake or a play, we just focus on what's next."