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US Field Hockey Announces 1999 Coaches of the Year
Colorado Springs, Colo. - Two coaches who have made the most of challenging opportunities have been named the U.S. Field Hockey Association’s Developmental and National Coach of the Year.
Nancy Cox, the highly-successful coach at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, received the Developmental Coach of the Year honor, while Shellie Onstead, head coach of the U.S. Field Hockey Under-16 Men’s Team, earned the honor as National Coach of the Year.
The two coaches will represent U.S. Field Hockey in the running for the 1999 United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Coach of the Year Awards to be presented on Sept. 18 in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Field Hockey Developmental Coach of the Year
Nancy Cox
Unlike the majority of US field hockey coaches who grew up
with the
game in high school programs in cities and towns throughout the northeastern United
States, US Field Hockey’s Developmental Coach of the Year, Nancy Cox, never held a
hockey stick until she went off to college at Western Michigan.
Upon completing college, Cox accepted the job as head field hockey coach at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan – a city in which college football and automobile manufacturing are much more familiar than penalty corners and free hits. Over the next eighteen years, she built the Pioneer program from sixteen athletes to more than ninety, coaching the team to eleven State Championships including the last 7 in a row while rolling to a remarkable 228-22-34 record. Her athletes have gone on to play in more than 15 different NCAA Division One schools, and include many high school and college All-Americans (Regional and National) as well as All-Conference selections. Cox currently serves as Assistant Coach at the University of Michigan.
In addition to her high school coaching accomplishments, Cox has participated in U.S. Field Hockey’s Futures Talent Identification and Olympic Development Program since its inception in the state of Michigan, serving as both head coach and site director for the Great Lakes region. Each year, Cox selects a team of All-Stars from the Great Lakes Region to participate in the National Hockey Festival, the largest grassroots field hockey tournament in the world. In 1998, Cox’s Team Michigan placed third in its pool, losing to tough teams from traditional hockey strongholds in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Cox’s impact on the Ann Arbor community is evident through the recreational leagues she has organized on Sundays during the high school "off-season", as well as a league which runs each Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. On three separate fields, former Cox athletes – now young coaches and umpires – give back to the sport by developing the skills of young girls and boys third grade through high school.
"Nancy Cox has single-handedly made Ann Arbor a Mecca for field hockey in the Midwest," says Marcia Pankratz, a 1988 and 1996 U.S. Field Hockey Olympian and head coach at the University of Michigan. "Parents have relocated to Ann Arbor to enable their children to play for Pioneer. Field hockey is growing rapidly here in the high schools and community in Michigan as a direct result of Nancy’s dedication and love for the game."
U.S. Field Hockey National Coach of the Year
Shellie Onstead
Shellie Onstead knows all about field hockey. As a player, she
earned collegiate All-America honors and landed a spot on the U.S. National Team. As a
coach, she’s won a conference title and produced a long list of players with national
honors.
But as much as Onstead knows about the game of field hockey, she knows even more about patience. Onstead is the head coach of the U.S. Field Hockey Association’s Under-16 Boy’s Team.
For her patience and hard work in leading the Association’s youngest team, Onstead has been named the U.S. Field Hockey Association’s National Coach of the Year.
With no middle school or high school boys’ field hockey programs to draw from, the U.S. Under-16 Team is a developing collection of raw talent culled from the junior members of club teams and brothers of field hockey-playing families on the East Coast. But in only the second year of the program, Onstead has molded the teenaged-team from a group of youngsters with little previous organized playing experience to a successful international touring team. The result of her patience is a proud representative of U.S. Field Hockey.
In 1999, Onstead’s patience was rewarded with a fourth place finish at the annual Easter Tournament in Valkenswaard, The Netherlands. The U.S. team finished the tournament with a 4-3-3 record including a win over the eventual tourney champions and a heartbreaking, penalty-stroke loss in the third place game. The only female on the men’s coaching staff, Onstead then guided the team to a 2-1 record in a series of games against Canada at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.
"Shellie organized the boys and produced a very disciplined group both on and off the field," said Leslie Milne, chair of U.S. Field Hockey’s High Performance Committee which oversees the elite team programs. "We did not have high expectations for them, but their results were outstanding and the organizers and parents were all very complimentary of the way the boys represented themselves and the USFHA."
Outside her duties with U.S. Field Hockey, Onstead is the head field hockey coach at the University of California-Berkeley. A 1982 All-America selection for the Golden Bears, she has been affiliated with the Cal program for 17 years including four as head coach. She was a member of the U.S. National team in 1985 and ’86. In addition, she has served as a coach Hockey’s Futures Talent Identification and Olympic Development Program, the men’s Under-21 and Under-18 teams and the women’s Under-19 team.
"We are very pleased with how quickly this young group of players is developing and the seriousness with which they take the game while at the same time having fun," adds Milne. "Shellie, along with Shiv (Jagday, U.S. Men’s National Team head coach), has integrated these concepts to make for a very hopeful future for the men’s elite team program."
With the rise of her players up through the senior national team level, Onstead will see her patience, as well as her coaching skills, continue to pay dividends. The results should be well worth the wait.
Previous U.S. Field Hockey Developmental Coaches of the Year recipients include Bea Thomas (1998), Dottie Zenaty (1997) and Vonnie Gros (1996) while the National Coach of the Year winners include Lauren Fuchs (1998), Karen Shelton (1997) and Pam Hixon (1996).
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