Coaches come and go at all institutions and Averett University is no stranger to this fact. In the past four months there have been many coaching changes for the university’s athletic staff. From coaches being promoted to coaches leaving, what has hit teams the hardest is the absence of head coaches. At the start of the 2024/2025 school year, the Women’s Lacrosse team, and Men’s and Women’s Golf teams were still without a head coach. There is currently a head coach for the golf team.
Interim Athletic Director and Compliance Officer Danny Miller, who has worked with the university for over 30 years, is no stranger to the hiring process.
“I’m a strong believer that a bad hire is worse than no hire. … hiring the wrong coach, or a coach that’s not really qualified or should be in that position would be more detrimental to the program.”
Despite the wait during the current coaching changes, the team captains are just as motivated if not more so with a lack of head coaches. Faith Bowlin, one of the Senior Captains on the Women’s Lacrosse team hopes to motivate her teammates by, “Letting them know that we have to control the things that we can control and in our sense that is playing Lacrosse…, because at the end of the day Lacrosse is still Lacrosse.”
Motivation is a key role in making sure you keep a team united and that shows up for every player and team differently. While Bowlin is trying to motivate her team by understanding what each player can and cannot control, Men’s and Women’s Senior Golf captains, Killian O’Reilly and Caroline Tamburstuen have different perspectives on it. Senior Killian O’Reilly wants his teammates to find not only motivation but to see where their competitive edge is, “Finding some form of competition between one another to focus on our games.”
Tamburstuen believes in hard work and encourages her teammates to push themselves to get better and has high expectations of not only her returners, but also of her freshman. “I’m going to try and push the girls as far as I can, but I’ll hold myself accountable for sure. I am going to need the girls to participate in that as well. Try and make themselves better, just because they want to and not because I’m telling them to.”
“We’ve been doing this for a while now, especially the juniors and seniors. We know how to motivate the younger guys and how to get them to practice, how to get them on the course.” said O’Reilly; similar to Tamburstuen’s approach.
The leadership from not only the captains, but the returners is vital to the teams’ success; however, what is especially important now is the teams’ mindsets.
Throughout interviewing the three senior captains and Miller, they all had a lot to say about changing one’s mindset during this big transition.
“Change your perception. Quit looking at the negative and find the positives,” Miller said.
Being positive is so important when dealing with adversity, however, at the end of the day the university’s athletes are there to play a sport that they love. Bowlin said it best.
“Come out and support everyone. At the end of the day, we are one team, and I don’t want to hear any negativity from anyone. We just need to move forward from this and keep a positive attitude. I think that’s the most important thing, you can’t get anywhere without a positive attitude.”