That theme of reconnection after graduation has been a common one in the annals of Miami field hockey. Workum and Roudabush Davis are not the only two teammates to find themselves on the sidelines together after meeting on the playing field. Lisa (DeStefano) Thompson and Gia (Fenoglio) Cillizza '98 turned their two seasons at Miami into a lifetime of friendship, forever bonded, among other things, by a shared love of coaching, field hockey, and sharing the sport with others.
 
Thompson and Cillizza arrived at Miami together in the fall of 1994 and developed a friendship that still lasts to this day. The two roomed together during their sophomore year. It was during this time that Thompson learned that her mother had developed cancer that was determined to be terminal.
 
The support that she got from Fesperman and Miami was something that Thompson has never forgotten. "Lil was amazing in how she supported me," reminisced Thompson. "They did everything they could to help me stay at Miami—while making sure that I could support my family. They promised I would always be a part of the Miami family – and that promise has been kept."
 
Ultimately Thompson transferred back home to attend the University at Buffalo, but she felt the need to stay connected with the sport. The support that Lil showed her resonated deeply, and Thompson knew she could pay it forward by becoming a coach. As such, she contacted her high school coach, where her sister was playing, and became her assistant while also serving as the head JV coach.
 
"It was an amazing experience," recalled Thompson. "Being able to coach my sister was a dream, but also being able to help mentor these young women like I had been mentored was a gift. Not only was it a great personal relief for me, but also it was a jumping-off point for the rest of my career in athletics."
 
After graduation, Thompson was introduced to an employer who was a former Division I baseball player. Fully aware of the power of sports and the importance and relevance of coaching, he helped her shape her day so that she would be able to leave by four to attend practices. This arrangement lasted two years before the bug hit Thompson harder.
 
"I knew this was my passion," recalled Thompson, who had graduated with a degree in Consumer Behavior and Advertising. "I knew I had to give myself the opportunity to pursue it on a full-time basis." When she went to have the discussion with the same gentleman who had given her the opportunity in the first place, he was stunned.
 
 
"He said I could write my own ticket in the business," Thompson said. "That was the dawning of the internet advertisement age, and I had set myself up well. But I knew that I had to follow my passion of sport, teaching, and the intersection in coaching."
 
With his blessing, Thompson left the agency and started to put herself out on the market for coaching jobs. She ventured to Springfield, Massachusetts to coach at a summer camp, sharing her resume with whoever would pay attention.
 
She got a bite from the head coach at Catholic University, and he invited her to come to DC for an interview. She landed the job, Thompson and was ready to move to DC as the assistant field hockey coach—for a sum of $500 per month. Ironically, a number of Thompson's girlfriends from Miami had relocated to the area, including Cillizza, so everything seemed aligned.
 
Before Thompson arrived for good at Catholic, however, the head coach that had hired her had moved on. Bob Talbot, then the athletic director at CUA, reached out to Thompson and they agreed to have Thompson take over for the 1999 season.
 
"I was 23 years old and was the head coach at Catholic—just a couple years older than many of the players," recalled Thompson. "Having Gia was a huge help to me as we navigated the experience together."
 
After graduating from Miami with a degree in English literature and journalism where she held multiple internships in the publishing and editorial field while serving as a captain on the hockey team for two years, Cillizza relocated to Washington, D.C. where she worked in the editorial division of National Journal Group (now Atlantic Media). Thompson reached out to her after she was named the head coach, and Cillizza accepted the offer. But it would require Cillizza to juggle a burgeoning career. That meant arriving at practices after work, and no travel, only helping out at home games.
 
"We absorbed everything we could about coaching," reminisced Thompson. "We were reading books by Vince Lombardi, leadership books by business stars, and taking it all in."
 
Cillizza added, "We supported each other through the process. We learned from each other, we learned from the players, and we grew so much ourselves during that time."
 
The combination worked, and despite the obstacles, Thompson and Cillizza helped the team forge a 10-9 record that year—the first winning record for a coach in their first year at Catholic in over 20 years. Duly impressed, Talbot awarded Thompson a full-time position as the head coach the following season.
 
"Granted, I had other administrative duties, including SWA and compliance, but I loved it," added Thompson. "Coaching athletics is one of the greatest jobs in the world, where you can find the power of the human spirit. I was ready to take it all on."
 
Together, Thompson and Cillizza grew as people and specifically as coaches. In their third year together, that maturity and strength would be called upon as the team entered the 2001 season.
 
"We had such a level of respect and trust for each other," said Cillizza. "We supported each other through the entire process."
 
That 2001 fall was a tough one for the program. Not only did the team weather the tragedy of September 11, with many players personally affected with losses in their families, but also in October, Thompson's mother passed.
 
"I ended up having to get back to New York often to support my family," said Thompson. "It was amazing how much my athletic family at Catholic was there for me. When I returned from my mother's funeral, the poem 'Footprints' had been placed around the locker room, with the statement 'Coach Thompson has carried us. Now it's our turn to carry her.' The support that I have received throughout my athletic career has always touched me deeply, and it's that support I always want to make sure I can share as a coach."
 
Despite the many challenges, the Cardinals rallied on the field. Not only did they notch a number of crucial wins against upper-echelon teams, but also they were ranked in the national polls for the first time in school history, and won a school-record 16 games en route to a runner-up position in the ECAC tournament at the end of the season—the best season to date for the school.
 
As the situation would have it, Thompson's husband was looking to relocate to Charlotte, N.C. There was only one option for coaching there—Davidson College. Thompson reached out to Christy Morgan, who was then the head coach for the Wildcats. They started the process of exploring Thompson's coming to Davidson. Morgan, however, left Davidson that summer, setting up the need for the Wildcats to hire a coach.
 
The administration was already familiar with Thompson through Morgan, and she was named the head coach just in time for the upcoming season. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Cillizza was following a similar path. Catholic was now looking for a coach, and the administration turned to the former assistant who had helped orchestrate the best season in Catholic history.
 
"I had been able to juggle many of my full-time responsibilities for the 2001 season," recalled Cillizza, "to help out when we had to support Lisa. I wasn't ready to give up my full-time job, so for that 2002 season I made it work. I had two full-time jobs, with both organizations supporting me. The administration at work had already asked me to move to the marketing department, where I could serve as a bridge between that department and the editorial department."
 
At the conclusion of the 2002 season, Cillizza had time to reflect on the season and her coaching journey. So too, did her new husband Chris.
 
"'You seem so much happier in season,' he said to me," recalled the former editor of her school newspaper. "We talked about it, and in the end I took a 70% pay cut and moved into a full-time role coaching field hockey at Catholic."
 
Much like Thompson, Cillizza also had additional duties in the department. She served as the Sports Information Director for the department, which meant she was not only responsible for coaching the field hockey team, but also organizing all of the statistics for all of the sports, plus writing game stories. "Chris helped out by writing many of the basketball stories," laughed Cillizza. "He was much better at it than I was, and I had my hands full as it was."
 
Cillizza had her hands full with winning. Over the next couple of years, she gained an assistant and lost some of her duties. As she was able to focus more attention on the business of coaching, she was able to provide more to her student-athletes. For her, that included all of the experience.
 
"It was very important to me to make sure that their experience was everything that a student-athlete should experience," affirmed Cillizza. "Being a coach is so much more than the X's and O's. There is change, there is growth, for them and for me, and I enjoyed all of that. I was there to help them with academics, career paths, and just life in general."
 
Thompson, too, was growing at Davidson. As fate would have it, the Wildcats season of 2002 included a game against Miami in Boone and then again in Oxford in the fall of 2003.
 
"I was so proud to share my Miami experience with Davidson. Lil and the team had shown me so much grace during a very difficult time in my life, and I was proud to share that with my players. I wanted them to know that was important to me, and it was going to be a part of how I interacted with them in the future."
 
There is no question that Thompson felt the connection of the Miami family; she also felt the connection of the coaching and field hockey family around the country,
 
"I am so thankful to so many women who opened up their doors to me," stated Thompson. "Missy at Maryland let me attend practices where I could learn and absorb. I was able to sort it out and worked to provide a student-focused program that would help them grow as well."
 
She was managing her own growing family while guiding the Wildcats in a new-to-them conference, the NorPac. That means many more nights on the road while planning practices and still growing as a coach. As Thompson's daughters got older, and as travel started taking its toll, the career coach realized that she could still put students first while spending more time with her family with a job at a high school. Charlotte Country Day had reached out to her many times looking for a coach, and she realized that she had an answer for them: herself.
 
"This is who I am," Thompson said to herself, "and I can still give to the sport."
 
When Thompson interviewed for the job at Country Day, the rising senior class had a significant role in the process. "They asked me, 'What are you bringing to the table?' I knew I had to learn the culture of the program. For any coach to be successful, they have to have a firm grasp on the culture of the team. You have to know your weaknesses and have people around to support what you need."
 
Over the next ten years, Thompson gained that firm grasp of the culture. The Bucs advanced to the state championship game in each of those ten years, winning four titles in that span.
 
"They really accepted me," thanked Thompson.  "I had a great buy-in by the community, and that shared trust helped us move forward together. It was my responsibility to help them see their greatness--their potential."
 
As Thompson and Charlotte Country Day was experiencing a strong run of success, so was Catholic. Cillizza had a remarkable run at the university, where she coached the Cardinals to a remarkable 186-104 record in 14 seasons that included five trips to the NCAA tournament, two trips to the Elite 8, and 15 All-Americans.
 
Cillizza's success was defined by much more than the championships and wins. She made life-long connections with her students that still exist to this day. Her focus was not on the winning, but on the student and their potential, and the byproduct was the winning.
 
"I wanted to help develop them," affirmed Cillizza. "My coaches made a huge impact on me. They helped me see the power of thinking and acting positively, and not letting negative thoughts inhibit my ability to grow. The importance of working together, with everyone having a role. The opportunity to earn a spot and then keep that spot. I learned all of that while playing, and they were important lessons that I knew I could pass that on to my teams."
 
Pass them on she did, and along the way, Cillizza and Thompson worked together to grow, both as individuals and coaches, in preparation of even more success on and off the field. The ability to share the experience with a good friend and teammate only heightened the experience.
 
Courtney (Fretz) Noll '09 also had the opportunity to pursue coaching as a career thanks to a good friend who "is like a big sister to me." Noll coached Futures during her senior year at Miami after leading the Red + White to a 14-7 record in the fall, completing a four-year stretch in which the team won at least 10 games each season.
 
"I really loved the connection with the athletes," recalled the Pennsylvania native. "Hockey had always been a part of my life, and I had so many great experiences in the sport. It was a natural fit to look into it after graduation."
 
Upon her return to Pennsylvania after Oxford, Noll applied to coach the middle school in her home town. Word got out to the head coach at Alvernia, Nikki Hartranft, who had attended the same high school as Noll and had been a de facto big sister to her over the years. She invited Noll to come to join her at Alvernia to pursue a graduate degree and coach the field hockey team with her.
 
"I wasn't looking to back to school then," recalled Noll, "but I was intrigued by the possibility, and I trusted Nikki."
 
For the next two years Noll coached field hockey and coached intramural and recreational sports while obtaining her Masters' degree in Leadership for Sustainable Communities. She would often finish the intramural or recreational portion of her work at 1:00 am and then have to get up early the next morning to coach field hockey.
 
After graduation from Alvernia, Noll once again got a call from Hartranft, who had moved back to her alma mater at Bloomsburg to assume the head coaching duties there. Noll jumped at the chance to work with her big sister again, and she made the trip to join the Huskies.
 
During this time Noll also had the chance to work with the local club X-Calibur, where she coached future members of the USA team like current captain Ashley Hoffman. Having played for Olympian Jill Reeve while playing at Miami, Noll was very much aware of the USA program and had a lot of respect for it.
 
"Jill was a machine," remembered Noll. "I could never fathom all she went through and what she was able to achieve. She just triumphed through everything."
 
For four years Noll was able to learn under the Hall of Famer, picking up a number of things that stay with her today.
 
"I very much appreciate Jill's work ethic," said Noll. "She kept challenging us to get outside our comfort zone. She believed that we had one more inch to give. It's something I think about when I talk with my athletes and work to develop them."
 
Develop them she has; Noll's teams at Bloomsburg have won over 100 games in her nine seasons.
 
"I'm very thankful for the chance to work with Nikki," Noll stated. "She has been an angel for me, helping me along my coaching path." The two have shared a friendship for years, and they get they get to play that out as colleagues on the sidelines.