Kahli Vojkovic sat most of her first season at Syracuse. She couldn’t quite grasp the style of play. She had come from a place where field hockey was just a hobby, an escape from a harsher reality she faced in her native Narellan Vale, Australia.

Forced to work a 40-hour week to support her education, Vojkovic didn’t have time to focus full-time on field hockey. When she finally did discover a path to America to play the game she loved, a bitter relationship with her estranged father almost derailed her dream.

But after finally reaching Syracuse and toiling for months in practice, the sophomore forward has earned her way into head coach Ange Bradley’s rotation. She’s a key contributor off the bench for No. 3 Syracuse (22-1), which will make its first-ever Final Four appearance Friday at 7:30 p.m. against second-seeded Wake Forest (21-3).

‘When I got (to America) I thought, ‘Oh my gosh how am I going to handle this?” Vojkovic said. ‘There’s nothing at home where you’d practice every single day. Even (at) our top leagues at home you don’t practice every day and it’s not nearly as intense.’

After taking a few months to adjust, the 23-year-old has worked her way into the SU lineup. Vojkovic even saw extensive minutes in the Big East tournament, and a starting nod in overtime during the Orange’s 3-2 victory against Princeton in the NCAA quarterfinals.

‘It’s nice to see her coming around and getting minutes and playing time,’ Bradley said. ‘But it’s all completely earned – because I don’t give handouts.’

Vojkovic came a long way from just a year ago. Back in Australia, Vojkovic worked full-time at Pitney Bowes – an office supply manufacturing company. Due to financial constraints at home, she had to leave school and place her dream of becoming a teacher on hold.

She still played field hockey on the weekends, but her main focus was working to get back to school.

Meanwhile, Vojkovic began to notice a trend of foreign players moving to the U.S. to play American college field hockey. It wasn’t until she ran into a former university teammate that things clicked – the sport that had once just been a release, a hobby, could be her ticket out of Australia and to an education.

So Vojkovic began searching American universities along the East Coast – where her friend had searched – in attempt to find the right program. As it turned out, Bradley was one of the first to respond to Vojkovic’s e-mail and the two began to forge a relationship.

‘Ange and I emailed a lot,’ she said. ‘We spoke on the phone quite a bit, and she sent me a lot of information. She was really nice and she ended up making this decision easy for me.’

Without a prior face-to-face meeting, the two reached an agreement – Vojkovic would enroll in the fall, where the university would provide a scholarship, an education, and an opportunity to play Division I field hockey.

It looked as though she finally had her shot, but like before, she suffered a setback.

As Vojkovic filled out her visa application, a form necessary to claim residence in the United States, she struggled with the answer to one of the questions. On the form it asked her: ‘Do you have any relatives in the U.S. and are they citizens?’

She did have a relative in the states – an estranged father who’d left the family when she was six years old.

Vojkovic forced herself to break more than a decade’s worth of silence with man she had barely ever spoken to. But Vojkovi’s father refused to give her the answers she desperately needed.

‘I e-mailed him and asked him a few of these things but he didn’t want to tell me,’ Vojkovic said. ‘He didn’t tell me whether he was a resident or a citizen, it was the only question I needed him to answer.’

Because her father refused to comply, the U.S. Embassy in Australia had to do background checks on her father in order to clear her in the United States. The background checks necessary were time-consuming and painstaking.

‘It was horrible,’ Vojkovic said. ‘I was so stressed out. All my family and all my friends thought I was a completely different person.’

Finally, Vojkovic arrived in America on Aug. 17. – four days late to preseason practice. Fresh off a 20-plus hour plane ride, she was in store for a whole new kind of pain.

With barely any sleep, the Australian native stumbled onto a practice field to compete against women with extensive experience, women who’d been training since January, and women who had not slept in the last two days.

‘I remember her cramping up, and I remember yelling at her,’ Bradley said. ‘I’m pretty sure she was jetlagged and shell-shocked and whatever; I think it was really hard.’

But Vojkovic eventually made a name for herself in practice with her speed. Bradley and her teammates watched as the transfer, who’d cramped up on the first day of practice, began to run circles around the opposition.

‘Kahli is extremely, extremely quick,’ sophomore Maggie Befort said. ‘… She’s so, so fast.’

Vojkovic’s effort in practice eventually earned her some time this season against Holy Cross on Oct. 19.

Not long into her first NCAA play, Vojkovic took control of the ball on a breakaway. She shed two defenders, took two steps into clear space, and blasted a slap shot into the back of the net. Vojkovic erupted in celebration inside the circle she’d just scored in, acknowledging a personal landmark in the hard road she’d traveled.

After years of struggles, everything had finally come together for Vojkovic.

‘I needed to change it up. I would not get this opportunity anywhere at home or anything like it,’ Vojkovic said. ‘If I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity, I had to take a big step, and I did it.’

ctorr@syr.edu

Published on November 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm