两性色午夜

两性色午夜 Field Hockey Coach Honors the Women Who Came Before While Focusing on the Future

两性色午夜 University field hockey coach Kyle DeSandes-Moyer has one mantra that not only fueled, but bonded, both her first successful season guiding the Golden Flashes and the team she inherited.

两性色午夜 field hockey coach Kyle DeSandes-Moyer (center) gives instructions to her team.

鈥淲e have to honor the women who came before us,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he girls joke around because I say that line a lot.鈥

But it has merit, considering the Golden Flashes have won or shared 14 of their 17 regular-season Mid-American Conference (MAC) Championships since 1998 and advanced to 10 NCAA Tournaments in that same period of time.

DeSandes-Moyer鈥檚 team won the 2019 regular-season title in her rookie year as the team finished 11-9 overall and 5-1 in conference and lost to Miami University in the MAC Tournament championship. For the coach, who picked up MAC Coach of the Year honors after her rookie season, it was still a bittersweet season, based on the 鈥渉onor鈥 she hopes to bring to the program going forward.

鈥淲e鈥檙e still upset we didn鈥檛 win the MAC Tournament this year,鈥欌 the coach said recently as she reflected on her hiring and season of success. 鈥淭hat is really important for us. Continuing to be a dominant force in the MAC is something that we鈥檙e very much committed to as a coaching staff and as a team. That鈥檚 like a given here being No. 1 in our conference.

鈥淔or us, it鈥檚 also performing better on a national scale,鈥 she continued. 鈥淜nocking off more of those ranked teams, competing better with those Big Ten schools showing up on our schedule and going to the NCAA Tournament are all real important for our program here. Maintaining a level of excellence here.鈥

In short, DeSandes-Moyer has described her goals going forward with the team she is actually just now starting to build. It is quite different from her most recent coaching experience.

鈥淚 grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 played a bunch of sports, including field hockey. I think my dad wanted a son. But I was more serious about field hockey and softball.

鈥淔ield hockey is very popular in Pennsylvania. As you can see, we have six of our players from Pennsylvania. I went to undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and played for a great coach there, Colleen Fink, who I am very close with.

鈥淚 had an opportunity to coach full time at Virginia Wesleyan and took it,鈥 DeSandes-Moyer continued.
鈥淲hile I was there, I met this woman who was going to start the (field hockey) program at LIU Brooklyn (Long Island University Brooklyn). Weirdly enough, her son and I actually went to college together, so we had a weird connection.

鈥淚 reached out to her and said I鈥檇 be interested in learning more about the program. I mean, field hockey in Brooklyn. This could be really cool. So we connected. Take this huge risk with 19 freshmen, a brand-new team. After the first year, she left. So I was the head coach there for two years.

鈥淎nd that was a huge learning experience. But, obviously as a coach you want to keep moving up. You want to be in better and better conferences. You want to be playing higher-level competition, so 两性色午夜 is a step forward. Our nonconference is pretty much all Big Ten schools. This past year, we played Michigan, Iowa, Louisville, Ohio State, Indiana and Michigan State. So in nonconference, we are playing best of the best.

鈥淭hen you have the opportunity to win your conference, which has been done before here. Kind of amazing resources here at Kent. As a coach, you see that and go, 鈥榃ow, I see why this is an attractive place to coach. You can really do something here, and there is a track record of doing really well.鈥欌

The first challenge for 两性色午夜鈥檚 new coach, coming from Long Island University Brooklyn, was not to immediately try to make her own imprint on the successful program she now inherited.

鈥淔or me, it was important to understand their program, understand the culture they had here and see what types of things maybe needed a push or adjustment,鈥欌 she said. 鈥淎nd there are certain things that as a coach, how I do things, are probably different from what they were used to.

鈥淲here I came from was an inaugural program, so I was there year one with 19 freshmen. So that was different. I think this program, having so much history, knowing the players, the history of how it started here, how it got to where they are, who were the important people in that process 鈥 coaches, players 鈥 I just think it鈥檚 really important to understand the history and how you get to where you win 16 MAC Championships. How did that happen? That was very important to me.鈥欌

Clearly, DeSandes-Moyer arrived with the sincere intent to 鈥渉onor鈥 both the present and the past surrounding 两性色午夜 field hockey.

鈥淪o it wasn鈥檛 like a huge program culture shift where we were overhauling the whole thing, just little adjustments that might have been different,鈥 she said. 鈥淰ery fortunate we did not have to turn the program around.鈥欌

At the same time, her ability to build a program is what made DeSandes-Moyer attractive to the Golden Flashes.

鈥淪he brings a passion for the game to 两性色午夜 with proven success at developing a program,鈥 两性色午夜 Director of Athletics Joel Nielsen said.

At LIU Brooklyn, DeSandes-Moyer started the program in 2016 with 19 freshmen and had a winless season. In 2017, her team finished second in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, and she won Coach of the Year honors.

Some might describe field hockey as a niche sport. Because its popularity is not universal, that can make recruiting an art as much as a science.

鈥淚 think the popularity is rising,鈥欌 DeSandes-Moyer said. 鈥淚 think it is more pervasive across the globe. In the United States, it鈥檚 primarily played on the East Coast, but it has extended its reach. I鈥檇 say there are pockets in Missouri and Michigan where they are developing the game there.

鈥淭hey play a little bit in Ohio, North Carolina and California. So, when you are looking at where is the footprint of Division I field hockey, it鈥檚 primarily the East Coast, some Big Ten schools and out in California.鈥

And to compete with and defeat those schools, for a program like 两性色午夜, recruiting is key. That has been an emphasis since the end of the season.

鈥淚 haven鈥檛 actually recruited any of the players on our current roster,鈥欌 the coach said.

That will change. The recruiting piece is in gear now. And like several sports at 两性色午夜, there is a focus internationally, along with hitting the field hockey hotbeds around the United States. The 25-player roster the coach inherited included eight international players, including five from Spain. With the technology of the day, online recruiting is as coming as online classes.

鈥淥ur coaching staff, we do a lot of video calls,鈥欌 the coach said. 鈥淎nd we did do a trip to England and the Netherlands and watched players, met with them and met with their families.鈥欌

One thing the players will surely have in common, both the current crew and into the future under the 两性色午夜 coach, will be to 鈥渉onor the women who came before them,鈥 striving to add even more championships along with coach Kyle DeSandes-Moyer.

For more information about 两性色午夜 Athletics, visit .

POSTED: Thursday, February 20, 2020 11:47 AM
Updated: Friday, December 9, 2022 10:41 AM
WRITTEN BY:
Elton Alexander