The Spire

Aiden Konold ’26

Chief Sports Editor

Holy Cross Crusader women’s lacrosse head coach, Amanda Belichick, enters the lobby area outside of her office with a smile etched onto her face. As she introduces herself, her smile widens. She extends her hand, offers a handshake, and walks into the coaches’ conference room with an air of confidence. 

The outside world is so used to seeing Belichick on game days as she stares out at the field in front of her, and analyzes the positioning of her players. There is rarely a smile on her face during games. Instead, Belichick’s eyebrows form into a frown and her lips remain taut. 

In this moment, though, as Belichick flashes her smile in the coaches’ conference room and sits comfortably in the swivel chair that she eventually adjusts to her liking, the qualities that make her such a likable and successful coach are evident. The ease that her players feel in her presence, Belichick’s calmness even as she at first struggles to adjust her seat, her ability to understand, her knack for explaining complex concepts in simpler terms. 

But the quality that sets Belichick apart from other coaches is her ability to see beyond the player. During the recruitment process and even once players arrive on campus to begin their collegiate lacrosse careers, Belichick never forgets that the student-athletes she coaches are people with personalities and dreams and anxieties. 

During her recruitment process, senior midfielder Olivia Kaval really appreciated Belichick’s transparency and the values that she emphasized. Coming from Garden City High School, Kaval felt like the chemistry of her high school teams was not always great. The value Belichick placed on team cohesiveness resonated with Kaval, and Belichick’s personality put Kaval at ease. 

“She was just so personable,” Kaval says. “Sometimes it’s so scary to go on these visits and talk to people, and she made it so easy. I felt like I could just have a normal conversation with her.” 

When Kaval was recruited at age sixteen, she felt like she had to have everything figured out. The pressure of feeling like she had to know where she wanted to spend four years of her life weighed heavily on her. Belichick went through the recruiting process herself, so she knew some of the anxieties that Kaval was facing. So instead of rescinding her offer to Kaval after two weeks as is custom among college coaches, Belichick gave Kaval an extra three months to make the right decision. 

“I really admire how much she cares about the player before the athlete,” assistant coach Joelle Prata says. “In her recruitment process, in her coaching style, in her teaching approaches, she’s always making sure that she’s connecting [with] the person before the player. It’s all about making sure that we have that connection before we try to guide them in any athletic way.”

In Belichick’s early experiences coaching lacrosse, first at Choate Rosemary Hall, then as an assistant at both UMass-Amherst and Ohio State, and later, the head coach at Division-III Wesleyan University, Belichick’s alma mater, she learned the importance in sometimes just sitting back and listening to what her players had to say. 

“I learned that I can learn a lot from them, and that it’s not about me teaching them everything I know. I was very humbled in the fact that I didn’t know a whole lot, and working with them was very eye opening and hearing what they saw, and being able to then help them develop… it was so collaborative,” says Belichick. “… [E]very day, every week, my goal is always to work with my players and to understand what they see and how they see it, and how we can work together to be better.” 

Belichick, ever resistant to the “my way or the highway” approach to coaching, does not want her players to repeat or do the same things that she maybe thinks they should do. Instead, she wants her players to have the flexibility to become better players rather than turning them into something that they’re not. 

“We really try to find out what their [players’] goals are for themselves,” Coach Prata says. “Being able to hit your own personal goals brings a level of satisfaction, brings a level of confidence that I think is immeasurable in other ways.” 

Just the other day, Prata and Belichick had a conversation with a freshman defender who they thought was capable of so much more than she was doing. Rather than create an action plan for her, Prata and Belichick asked the defender what her goals were, what she wanted to get out of the fall and the spring seasons.

“She was able to articulate what she wanted out of the fall season, what she wanted to be able to do, what she wanted to be able to show us,” Prata continued. “And I think that finding their goals and aligning them with what we think that they are capable of is important in their confidence, in them finding personal success.” 

And when the players are an active part of the conversation, they are also more likely to buy into the culture, which contributes to team success. 

“The main source of our success last year was our culture. Our players were dedicated. They were all on the same page. They knew that they had to work hard in order to get what they wanted,” Coach Prata says. “They were very much aligned in their goals. And they all had similar visions of what they wanted, which was what we wanted as well. And I think that having a good culture was a key factor in us being able to teach new skills and teach at a higher level.”

Belichick, the recipient of the 2024 IWCLA Service Award and the 2024 Patriot League Coach of the Year, does not much care for the accolades. Above all else, she cares about her players. 

From a roller coaster 3-14 finish in her first season as the Holy Cross head coach to last season’s 12-6 record and Patriot League playoff semi-finals appearance, Coach Belichick has never lost sight of what’s most important. And it’s starting to pay off.

Featured image courtesy of USA Lacrosse