hen you go to the grocery store to buy a bundle of bananas, you have a decision to make: Do you buy the bunch that has a slightly green hue, knowing that several will have a starchy taste for a few days before ripening? Or do you buy the bunch that’s perfectly yellow, knowing that in a few days bacteria-filled brown spots will develop? If you’re Northwestern coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, you don’t have to make that choice. You choose both. A handful of already-ripe bananas, and a few that need a few more days of sitting out. Though Amonte Hiller can pluck the
nation’s top recruits of her choosing from across the country (the yellow bananas) she continues to bring in raw players (the green bananas) and focus on player development. Given Northwestern’s recent success, winning six of the last seven national championships and looking like the favorites to repeat in Stony Brook come Memorial Day weekend, Amonte Hiller has at her disposal the nation’s most coveted talent. If she wants the best player from the best team in the lacrosse-rich Mid- Atlantic she has a good shot.
But Amonte Hiller has not shied away from recruiting players from non- traditional lacrosse regions or those with under-developed skills. In fact, she has embraced it. She has supreme confidence in her ability to teach the game and get the most out of each individual, regardless of their background in the game. In a way, this is nothing new for Amonte
Hiller. She famously saw twin sisters Courtney and Ashley Koester running on Northwestern’s lakefront campus and offered them an open tryout. They had never picked up a lacrosse stick. Four years later, they had started all 70 games and were critical contributors on the Wildcats’ first national title-winning team in 2005. “Traditionally, we’ve been able to find two or three kids that we think have the potential, but maybe not right now, to do some special things,” Amonte Hiller said. “We’ve stayed true to that. It’s knowing who you are and trusting that.” When she was first named head coach
at Northwestern, Amonte Hiller was relatively inexperienced and started late
Lightly recruited out of Dallas, Northwestern junior midfielder Taylor Thornton has become one of the top two- way threats in women’s lacrosse.
52 LACROSSE MAGAZINE May 2012>>
in the recruiting season. She couldn’t convince the polished lacrosse player to come to the Midwest. But as a player, Amonte Hiller knew how Maryland had success in the 1990s — “horses that were tall and fast.”
So, she focused on finding people with two main components: athleticism and competitiveness. She wanted to attract to Evanston athletes that were bigger, stronger and faster than traditional lacrosse players and, as long as they were willing to work hard and be the best, she could teach them the game. “That’s all it takes,” said junior Taylor Thornton, a U.S. women’s national team member and Tewaaraton Award candidate who started playing lacrosse in seventh grade in Dallas. Thornton was lightly recruited out of the Hockaday School (Texas) but now is one of the nation’s most feared forces. “Kelly is a lacrosse genius. She could take any good athlete and mold them into a successful lacrosse player. “I remember when I came back from
Northwestern’s summer recruiting camp and I told my mom, ‘I’ve never learned so much in two days in my life.’ When you go to other camps, you’re kind of doing monotonous things. You’re doing the same thing over and over. But I learned more in those two days than the past five years of playing lacrosse. I was like, ‘If I can learn that much in two days, who knows what I can do in four years being coached by Kelly?’”
In a world where lacrosse continues to generate unprecedented levels of attention and corresponding pressure to win now is at an all-time high, Amonte Hiller hasn’t strayed from the approach that made her teams successful at the outset. “I don’t view my recruiting as risky. We
try to get the kids that are right for the program and believe the things that we believe in,” Amonte Hiller said. “If it’s a kid from a traditional area or non-traditional area, developed skills or non-developed skills — we don’t discriminate and we’re open-minded — we’re trying to develop everyone. It’s not a risk, because I believe in them and I believe in our staff. “For me, that’s what I love most about coaching — the teaching aspect. Seeing a player go from coming in and not having all the tools or skills they need to be successful at this level and incrementally getting there after each day of work. Giving them specific instruction, along with them gaining some confidence, is really key.” The latest example? Sophomore Alyssa Leonard, who didn’t start playing lacrosse until three weeks before tryouts
A Publication of US Lacrosse
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