Seconds-in-command give teams second wind

• Often fresh out of college, Yale's assistant coaches help to invigorate programs.

In terms of experience, Yale coaching assistants come from diverse backgrounds. Some arrive at Yale after stints at Division II schools and Big East powerhouses. Some come after playing on national teams. Others come to Yale right after graduation, and many squads boast Yale alumni as well as current graduate school students.

Assistant coaches are supervised and hired by head coaches, who make decisions about the needs of the team and then search for the right student to enhance the program. "Each program is looking for the best person to strengthen the coaching staff. Some of the best candidates are graduates of Yale or another Ivy institution, and sometimes the best candidate has experience at many institutions," Assistant Director of Athletics Colleen Lim said. "We do aim to hire assistant coaches with good experience. We look at their experience as student-athletes and their recruiting experience. Sometimes specific expertise in coaching is very important—goalie coaches are hard to come by, for example. Some coaches we hire have spent many years as assistant coaches and sometimes we do hire recent grads. It just depends on the needs of the program and the strength of the candidate."

Gearing up to be higher up

Born and bred in New Haven, women's crew assistant Georgia Crowley, JE '95, returned to coach at her alma mater after working with collegiate and high school teams on both coasts. Upon graduating from Yale, Crowley traveled to Chattanooga, Tenn. to train at the U.S. National Team Training Center. "I realized immediately that I wasn't going to make the team, and I wanted some space so I decided to take a year off—I originally had hoped to come back to train," she remembered. "I went out to California and took my first coaching position at a high school for $100 a month." After two years, Crowley became the varsity coach and led the Oakland Strokes to their first state final in 10 years. After briefly taking a position at Exeter, Crowley moved back to California as an assistant coach at the University of California at Berkeley. "Berkeley was a team that was supposed to be good, but they weren't," she recalled. "Something wasn't happening." Crowley helped develop the rowers into national-level competitors, guiding them to a third-place finish at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship in 1998. After her success out west, Yale's head crew coach, Will Porter, "called me and told me to get my butt out here. He called enough times, so I came."

Crowley has the same vision for the Bulldogs that she had for her team at Berkeley. "There is a great group of very competent athletes here that are able to make a national championship boat in a few years. I want to make the experience as great as possible for them—so they can grow and develop to their own potential," she said. "I want to make a championship boat, and I want to try and rebuild the program."

Like crew, the women's lacrosse team is also blossoming with the help of Assistant Coach Blair Palmer, a former goalie at Vanderbilt University. Head Coach Amanda O'Leary had recruited Palmer as a prospective athlete while she was still in high school, and the two kept in touch over the years. "There's always a need for goalie coaches, so she called me when I got to New Haven," where Palmer had come to pursue a master's degree in public health before proceeding to medical school. "It's hard being a student here and coaching at the same time, but I can understand how the players struggle, because I was a student-athlete too," she explained.

Palmer's duties include phone-recruiting and trip-planning, but she sees her relationship with the players as her main priority. "Because I am young and because I was just part of the collegiate athletic atmosphere I know what these girls are going through. And the girls know that we know what it's all about—they know we just did it," she said. "Some of the coaches and assistant coaches around here have been away from that side of the sport for so long that they lose touch. We have to get the right people in the job to stir things up and make some positive changes."

Guiding changes

Positive changes have been happening quickly in the men's basketball program, which was invigorated this year with the arrival of a completely new coaching staff. New Head Coach James Jones, a former assistant coach at Yale from 1995 to 1997, brought with him two young but experienced assistants: Curtis Wilson spent the last five years as an assistant to former Yale basketball coach Tom Brennan at Vermont, and Rob Senderoff worked with Jones at Adelphi University and signed on the day Jones got the job at Yale.

JULIA TIERNAN/YH The energy and experience of men's assistant basketball coach Curtis Wilson (far left) has been a prime factor in the team's turnaround.

Wilson was also an assistant coach at Adelphi as a part-time master's candidate in sports medicine. "The schedule wasn't grueling or time-consuming," he said, but money was short—a familiar woe for assistant coaches—and he took on extra jobs "just to keep things going." After five years with Brennan at Vermont, Wilson was ready to move on. He had an opportunity to go back to Adelphi as a head coach, but he had heard about Jones's appointment at Yale and decided he wanted to work with him. "James is just a tremendous person," he said. "He wants to get things done. And I knew I wanted to help."

Wilson has more responsibilities here, including handling finances, planning road trips, coordinating clinics camps, and of course recruiting. Recruitment is sometimes a frustrating issue for the basketball program. Senderoff, who previously coached at Adelphi and Miami of Ohio, plays a major part in negotiating packages for prospective athletes. Since Ivy schools do not give out athletic scholarships, Yale often loses recruits to Division I scholarship schools such as Duke and Stanford.

Another big frustration is losing players to Ivy powerhouses Princeton and Penn. "We have to convince kids that Yale is a passage to success. We have to sell the Yale dream—that a Yale degree is stronger than anyone else's," Senderoff said. "If a kid goes to Penn, I put it on me. If we lose him, it's my job to find someone else."

Senderoff acts as the liaison to the admissions office, but he has little direct influence on an athlete's chances of acceptance or the aid package he or she is eligible to recieve. He talks to families, negotiates with financial aid, and tries to sign players that would "get it done" for Yale. "In order to be competitive, in order to win a championship, we need to get the kids who have been going to Princeton and Penn," he said. "It's frustrating that we're limited in how many and what types of kids we can take on, but I have to deal with it and go along. That's part of my job."

Special relationships, special problems

Both recruiting and relationship issues fall squarely to assistants. Relationships with the players are often tricky, because assistant coaches are less likely to be disciplinarians and more likely to be confidantes. This type of chummy relationship is especially problematic for young coaches, such as assistant volleyball coach Katharine Foster-Keddie, BR '99, who began working at the collegiate level right after graduation. "I knew almost all the girls as players and as people, [which]was a frustration for me sometimes," she said. "So many of the players knew me as a teammate that at times it was hard to make them understand that `I am a coach now and you have to listen to what I'm saying.'"

Regardless of the complications involved with being an assistant, the benefits of being at Yale draw many assistant coaches to New Haven. Some, like Wilson and Senderoff, hope to go on to a head coaching position at a Division I conference powerhouse. Some, like Palmer and Foster-Keddie, want to stay with the game for as long as possible. And Crowley has no idea what the future holds. "I'd love to stay here. It's a wonderful place to work. But I haven't thought that far ahead. I'm still having fun."

Graphic by Shawn Cheng.

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