What’s It Like To…coach college-level sports?

"What's It Like To…" is a series that looks inside the worlds of extreme sports and professional athletics.

Hannah Rudloff is Head Coach of women's lacrosse at Drexel University. I have worked with her team, and was impressed by her knowledge and progressive coaching, and the respect her players had for her. She's been at Drexel for 2 years as Head Coach and 3 years as an Assistant Coach. Prior to that, she was an assistant coach at Marist College for 1 year.

Q:  What's your own sports history?

I played soccer, basketball and lacrosse pretty consistently throughout my childhood. I loved all the sports I played, and I started playing club soccer when I was in elementary school.  Lacrosse was still a young sport, so there weren't as many club options as there were for soccer, but I ended up playing seriously for a lacrosse club program when I was in high school.  I played collegiately at Penn from 2005-2009 and had an amazing experience that only grew my passion for the game and got me truly interested in coaching as a career.

My mom coached me in lacrosse, and my dad coached me in soccer and basketball.  My dad was the girls' basketball coach at my high school, West Chester East, for about 30 years.

Q:  Did your parents being coaches influence you?

Definitely. Especially with my dad being a high school coach for so many years, I got to see the impact he had on his players' lives, and I am so proud of him for that.  I also know that because my mom and dad were both coaches, they are so supportive of my career path, which makes me enjoy it even more. My dad will send me his stat analyses and thoughts after most games, and he even takes pictures on the sidelines. People ask them a lot why they "let me" go into coaching when I have an Ivy-league degree, and I am so thankful that they stand by me and this path.

I had a lot of great coaches at all levels, and I think my coaching style is a mix of all of them. My coaches at Penn, Karin Brower Corbett and Julie Young (now the head coach at Villanova), were strong teachers of the game and were very organized. Our team was disciplined and had a clear game plan for unified goals, which are traits I try to instill in our team at Drexel.  My goal is always to couple that team discipline with strong individual relationships with my players – if I don't know what personal struggles on the field and off each of them might have, more often than not I'm going to have a hard time helping each individual perform to the best of her ability.

Q:  Best thing about being a college coach?

It's getting to see the transformation that kids make during their time in college. Their confidence grows, they become leaders, they learn who they are, they make mistakes, they learn from them.  It's really cool to see young women transition into adulthood, and to get to meet so many amazing people and families along the way.

I also love that coaching demands so many diverse skills.  As a college coach, you have to be a travel agent, a videographer, a social media expert, an event coordinator, etc. Teaching the game of lacrosse on many days is only a small part of it – and I like that, as a result, I'm never ever bored.

Q:  Most difficult thing about being a college coach?

Probably the biggest challenge, as in a lot of careers, is the work/life balance. With coaching you have really unorthodox schedules, travel a lot, work weekends in the summer, etc. and you definitely miss some holidays, weddings, and other life moments because of that.

Q:  What are the top skills you think are most important to being successful as a coach?

Probably the skill I would rank most important is organization and the ability to plan. You need to be a strong communicator – you need to be able to motivate your team, communicate schedules, ease the minds of parents, and sell your school to recruits. And you need to be able to think and problem solve on your feet.

Q:  In what ways do you include sports psychology skills in your team's training?

In the past we have worked with sports psychologists as a team, but I have found that everyone has individual challenges and that the group setting isn't the most time efficient.  So when we meet with our players individually, we work with them on areas where they might be struggling. Sometimes that might result in having them read a chapter of a sports psychology book, and sometimes we give them a concrete task like creating a journal.

In the group setting this year we focused a lot on our leadership, and had structured meetings with our captains and junior leaders where we worked out of a course book on leadership.

Q:  In what ways do you think coaching women might be different than coaching men?

I think that for women, team chemistry and strong relationships with their teammates and coaches are much more important factors in their experience and happiness as a collegiate athlete than they are for men. So we make sure our team is a family – that everyone has a bond both on the field and off through team dinners and other social activities – like going laser tagging or going to Franklin Fountain for ice cream.  We also have started an alumni mentor network to bond past players with present ones and really extend that feeling of being a dragon family.

As coaches, we make it a priority to get to know our players individually as people off the field, to have an open door policy, and to be there for them for any issues in their lives.  I don't think it's a secret that women on the whole usually need to talk through their issues, and so we have to be prepared to be on the receiving end of those talks and be able to help in any way possible.

Thanks to Hannah for sharing her story!  If you do ultra sports or have a sports-related career and would like to be interviewed, contact Dr. Whitman at sarah.whitman@drexelmed.edu.

Dr. Sarah Whitman practices sports psychiatry in Philadelphia. She is a guest contributor on Sports Doc.

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