Preparing itself for an upcoming trip to Holland in May, the field hockey team will travel this weekend to compete in the United States Field Hockey Association National Indoor Tournament at Maryland.

The Lady Lions will play four games -- against Syracuse, a West Chester Alumni squad, Ohio State and a Baltimore team, on both Saturday and Sunday. Coach Charlene Morett Newman said the tournament is divided into brackets with the top two teams from each bracket advancing into Sunday's finals.

"I feel the team is motivated for next year," Newman said. "They've worked hard during the indoor season. This is a competitive group of girls and this tournament has the type of atmosphere that the experience is really going to pay off."

The format of the tournament is unlike that of regular-season field hockey. The playing field is smaller, it has walls on each side to play the ball off of, the surface is much faster and the stick is lighter. Also, only five players and a goalkeeper are playing at any given time. Normally 11 players play; Penn State is taking only 12 this weekend.

"It's a lot of different rules," Kristen Winters said. "We've had to adjust our whole style of play. (But) it's neat.

We're using the same skills and applying them to indoor."

The majority of the participants in the tournament are club teams, including Red Rose of Lancaster, Pa., who has won this championship before. Most of them had to qualify for the event through a series of qualifying rounds. The Lady Lions had the fortune of receiving an at-large bid to the field.

"This tournament will be real competitive and whoever wins it must have a lot of stamina and be a strongly skilled team," Newman said.

Newman likes her team's chances if based only on the fact that Penn State will return 10 starters next fall, following an 18-3-1 record, an Atlantic 10 Championship and a NCAA berth. Also, the chance to play Ohio State will give the team a chance to preview some of its future opponents. The Lady Lions might begin play in the Big 10 next season.

This will be the first year Penn State competes in the indoor tournament because in previous years it had used up all of its allotted competition dates. Each team is only allowed 22 game days and with only 19 regular season games in 1989, the Lady Lions could make the trip.

Since the team's season ended last November in a 2-1 loss to Penn in the NCAAs, they have been preparing for Holland.