Home Field Advantage

I can think of no other Howard County high school sport where the field condition can give an advantage or disadvantage to a team.

Take the top two county teams from a year ago and the fields that they play on. Centennial keeps beautiful, lush, almost long grass. Stick skills, passing, and finess dominate on the Eagle course. Now think about Glenelg. Its a hard, dusty, dirty racetrack. The game revolves around speed. A pass that may travel 15 yards at Centennial will be hard-pressed to stay inbounds at Glenelg.

No doubt that both teams are equally affected by the playing conditions during any given game, but a team that's accustomed to one playing condition could take half the game to adapt to another playing condition. This makes any road victory in the county that much more impressive.

In Howard County field hockey, "home field advantage" takes on much more importance.