[NU Sports] Women's Lacrosse Coach Establishing a Legacy -

[Tom Maycock]

>>  http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/38407/

> 
> Nice article, but it isn't clear what the author
> meant by 'establishing a legacy'.  


I think it was intended to refer to the author's contention that KAH is deserving of consideration as one of the best college coaches ever. 

Personally, I'd agree with that. There's simply no way to fairly compare across sports or eras, so in that sense the discussion is somewhat pointless. But, just observing as a fan, it's hard to imagine anyone doing the job of "college coach" any better than Amonte-Hiller. More concretely, her legacy will be the ever-increasing number of her ex-players holding assistant or head coaching positions elsewhere. 

However, I disagree with the author's rather negative assessment of fan support of the Lax team. It's all relative, of course. But at a school where we have trouble getting 30,000 fans (and 4,000 students) for football, getting 1,000 or more (including hundreds of students) out to a Lax game is pretty impressive. 

Speaking of Lax, they are now 2-and-0 after a couple of relatively easy wins over #6 Stanford and #5 Duke (although Duke is missing one of their best players this year). 

Prior to the start of the season, the Lax team was involved in the US Champion Lacrosse Challenge, where they worked out with and played exhibition games against English and American national teams. 

They beat the English team handily, but were completely dominated by the US national team, especially in the first half of the main game, which I watched via a live stream. It was *amazing* to see how good the national team is. They dominated NU like NU normally dominates mid-pack or lower college teams. NU could barely get the ball into the offensive zone in the first half, let alone get off a shot. They did play a lot better in the second half, and I'm sure the experience will benefit them greatly during the season--they won't play another team anywhere close to that good. 

Of course, a big chunk of the scoring and defensive damage done by the US team was at the hands of ex-NU players. There's that KAH legacy again. 

Tom