Hockey Player Refuses to Play the Field : Field hockey: Pankaj Padhiar will follow the Olympic Festival with a trip to England, where he will select a bride according to tradition.

Pankaj Padhiar, a field hockey player at the U.S. Olympic Festival, has spent the past four days chasing a small, white ball with a cane-shaped stick.

Next month, he will again be in pursuit--not for sport, but for a spouse.

Padhiar, a 25-year-old Huntington Beach resident, plans to follow the traditional courting procedures of India, homeland of his ancestors. On Aug. 24, he will fly to Sussex, England, where relatives will have lined up several specially selected single women for him to meet. Before he returns home, he will choose one and ask her to be his wife.

He’ll have four to six weeks to make his choice.

“People (from the United States) freak out about this situation,” said Padhiar, a West team member who will play against the East in the gold-medal match at 4 p.m. today at Loyola Marymount. “But hey, it’s OK.”

Having to find the right woman in such a short time might seem like a pressure-packed assignment, but Padhiar shrugs it off. He might play some field hockey while he’s there, having already checked out the local clubs, but his No. 1 priority is to find a wife. Besides, it’s not like he’s breaking new ground--his older brother went through the same process two years ago.

“The reason you go to England in the summer is that’s when all the weddings are,” he said. “You go to all these weddings and meet a lot of girls. It’s like a meat market. You can’t lose.”

While Padhiar’s comments might make feminists steam, the soft-spoken Indian says he means no disrespect. After all, he is merely following centuries-old tradition.

Anyway, he says, the girl can always refuse. It wasn’t always that way, of course.

Prearranged marriages were once the norm in his culture. Padhiar’s mother and father were barely introduced before their wedding day, so Padhiar figures the current situation can’t be beat.

Especially, he says, when compared to the hit-and-miss dating most Americans experience. Occasionally, Padhiar dates non-Indian women, but he said he’d never fall in love with any of them.

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” he said.

Padhiar was born in Uganda, but soon after his birth he and his family fled to England to escape the wrath of dictator Idi Amin, who ordered all Indians out of the country. The Padhiars emigrated to the United States, where they settled in South Carolina. Ten years later, they moved to Huntington Beach, where Padhiar attended Ocean View High School.

But tragedy struck soon after the family’s arrival: Padhiar’s father, Mohan, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Today, Padhiar, an auto mechanic for German sports cars, shares a house with his mother, Kanta, his brothers, Raju and Pritish, and Raju’s wife, Jamie.

His mother is careful to keep the Indian culture alive in their home. The family practices Hinduism and eats traditional Indian foods--no red meat allowed. Padhiar’s favorite food is a sweet called jalibe , a fried bread flavored with rose water and honey.

“I eat a lot of Taco Bell, too,” Padhiar says. “But my mother doesn’t like it in the house.”

Padhiar started playing field hockey when he was 14. He says a cousin took him to a playing field and handed him a stick. He had no clue what to do.

“I had just moved from the East,” Padhiar said. “When my cousin said he was playing ‘hockey,’ I figured he meant ice hockey.”

Today, Padhiar is the center forward for the Orange County Colts, a club team based in Huntington Beach. He and his brother, Pritish, helped start the team almost 10 years ago. His Colt teammates include Anaheim residents Tony Tyler and Robbie Ryan, both of whom are also on the Festival’s West team.

His teammates say Padhiar is a quick, talented forward who is very intense on the field. Tuesday morning, the West defeated the East, 3-2, to enter today’s gold-medal match with a 6-0 record.

While Padhiar has had several opportunities to score this week, he hasn’t been able to capitalize. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though. He seems a very modest man, a team player, and not someone obsessed with winning.

“To tell the truth, I haven’t dedicated myself to the sport like some of the others,” he said. “I just came out here to play good hockey.”

His philosophy about finding a wife is somewhat similar.

Asked what requirements he would have in making his selection next month, Padhiar said he is not interested in one particular look or body type. He doesn’t see a wife as a trophy.

“It is not features I am looking for,” he said. “We are a gentle people. . . . We are looking to be happy.”