I’ve always said that, when it comes to coaching, it is very difficult to follow a legend. This goes for Phil Bengston (Green Bay after Vince Lombardi), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina after Dean Smith), David Moyes (Manchester United after Alex Ferguson), or Jerod Mayo (New England after Bill Belichick).
And now you can add the name Lisa Bervinchak Love to the list, a field hockey coach who served as an assistant coach to Hall-of-Famer and Olympian Char Morett for 29 years before taking that step to the head of the coaching box. Last week, it was announced that her contract would not be renewed by Penn State.
In my travels across America watching field hockey, I have seen all kinds of players and all manner of head coaches.
And I have also seen assistant coaches, who toil alongside their bosses out of the spotlight. Time was, assistant field hockey coaches had a number of roles. Some were the de facto head coach of the junior varsity team, at least until JV teams went out of favor in the 1990s.
More recently, assistant coaches, especially at top U.S. colleges, have taken on various roles, from specialized goalkeeper coach to penalty corner assistant to offensive or defensive coordinators.
And at times, like for Bervinchak Love, an assistantship can be an apprenticeship towards becoming a head coach.
Bervinchak Love, and all coaches, are judged not only by the way they affect the lives of their players and the quality of the product on the pitch, but are judged by the most unwavering of standards: wins and losses. In three seasons under Bervinchak Love, Penn State went 24-27.
In the season just past, the Nittany Lions weren’t terrible. Eight of the team’s defeats were by two goals or fewer, meaning that a mistrap or two in each of these games could have changed the outcome in PSU’s favor. But the won-loss record is what an athletic administration sees, and they evidently made a decision based upon it.