Fourth in a sequence of weblog entries on TopOfTheCircle.com’s quarter-century of overlaying lacrosse.
As a lot as lacrosse has been about gamers and groups, they wouldn’t be anyplace with out nice teaching. And te worlds of women’ and girls’s lacrosse have been chock stuffed with nice teaching the final quarter-century.
In Division I, the most effective coaches, for me, have been Cindy Timchal of Maryland and Kelly Amonte-Hiller of Northwestern. Every had dynastic eras within the final 30 years of the game, by way of recruitment and improvements in gear and sports activities science.
There have been different nice teaching performances through the years, together with these by Princeton’s Chris Sailer, Virginia’s Julie Myers, UNC’s Jenny Slingluff-Levy, and Boston Faculty’s Acacia Walker-Weinstein.
Sailer, particularly, deserves credit score for the way in which that the sport modified through the years. She was an absolute genius when it got here to creating matchup issues for the opposition, particularly within the early to mid-Nineties when all 11 outfielders had been allowed to leap into the assault.
Within the decrease divisions, there is just one identify for me: Sharon Goldbrenner-Pfluger. The pinnacle coach of Trenton State/The Faculty of New Jersey has greater than 650 wins on the lacrosse discipline in addition to a passel of nationwide championships.
Pfluger has additionally been an awesome servant of ladies’s sports activities at Hillwood Lakes, profitable greater than a thousand contests in each discipline hockey and lacrosse over greater than 75 seasons mixed in each sports activities. She’s one in every of solely a couple of dozen coaches to be featured within the NCAA Corridor of Champions in Indianapolis.
Within the colleges, there have been a number of memorable coaches that I’ve met during the last 25 years. One is Angela Tammaro, who has almost 1500 wins in each discipline hockey and lacrosse at Greenwich (Conn.) Academy.
I’ve additionally had the pleasure of interviewing Kathy Jenkins, who’s the one coach that Alexandria St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes (Va.) has ever had since beginning this system in 1976. Since then, she has accrued 850 wins as the pinnacle coach of the Saints. She has taken the troublesome highway in the case of scheduling the group, touring so far as Florida for competitors, then bringing in plenty of regional and nationwide powers for a sequence of video games within the annual Spring Fling.
One other coach of word during the last quarter-century is Chris Robinson. Irrespective of whether or not he coached Ellicott Metropolis Mount Hebron (Md.), Owings Mills McDonogh (Md.), or Orlando Lake Highland Prep (Fla.), he was capable of finding success together with his groups. He harnessed the expertise and gave them a relentless drive for perfection by way of excellence in profitable the attracts and executing on the assault finish.
Equally matched by way of with the ability to give groups a way of relentlessnes is Brooke Kuhl-McClelland, who took over from Robinson at Mount Hebron. McClelland, who was the coach of dance groups in Howard County, Md. for a number of years, used lots of these ideas of motion and accountability to create almost unstoppable groups.
Extra lately, lots of people have taken discover of the job that Darien (Conn.) head coach Lisa Lindley has carried out for the Blue Wave. Lindley, final 12 months, coached maybe the best season the college has ever had, together with her five hundredth profession teaching victory. She received the TopOfTheCircle.com United States Coach of the Yr award after a state championship season throughout which the group not solely performed in what turned out to be essentially the most aggressive league in America, but in addition performed one contest beneath a barely completely different algorithm from what the Wave are used to.