The United States Coach of the Year: 2009
Danyle Heilig, Voorhees Eastern (N.J.)
The 2009 season for Danyle Heilig and the field hockey team at Voorhees
Eastern (N.J.) ended how it usually does: with the team hosting a state
championship trophy at the end of the New Jersey Group IV championship.
What has made Heilig the TopOfTheCircle.com
United States Coach of the Year for 2009 is not only the quality
of a team which won 26 games this season and a second consecutive
Tournament of Champions. It wasn't the fact the team became the second
in the recorded history of American scholastic field hockey
to score more than 200 goals in a season. It wasn't the fact that the
team steamrolled its competition in the state tournament, including a
6-1 win in the Group IV final and an 8-2 win in the Tournament of
Champions final.
It wasn't the presence of the last Dawson sister, Melanie, the star
center back. It wasn't the goalkeeping of Alana Barry, who is
threatening to obliterate the career Federation record for career
shutouts. It wasn't because forward Kelsey Mitchell scored 69 goals
this year and 171 in her career, both the second-best scoring marks of
all time.
Instead, the award is given because the 2009 season is the product of
an unprecedented 11-year continuum of excellence.
For the Vikings, winning is not just something expected; it is routine.
"For me," Heilig says, "losing is unacceptable."
It's gotten to the point that at the end of the year, she normally
doesn't get the Coach of the Year awards from either the local coaches'
association or the newspapers who are fortunate to have Eastern in
their coverage area.
Now, it's easy to discount Heilig's coaching acumen in her situation.
The town in which Eastern is located is a a planned suburb where the
children of Philadelphia's professional athletes have been known to
excel in school sports: the daughters of Ron Jaworski, now a
commentator on Monday Night Football,
played with distinction on Eastern's field hockey team in the 1990s.
It's also easy to point out that the three middle schools that play
field hockey prepare players better than anywhere else in the country.
Ed Kirkwood at Berlin Community School, Lori Hillman at Gibbsboro, and
Ginny Concepcion and Jessica Rosetti at Voorhees Middle School
continually help turn out players who are ready to contribute as
freshmen to the varsity program.
But it's just as easy for a coach to let all of these resources waste
away. And the 239 wins in the decade of the 2000s say that she
certainly has not allowed that to happen.
For all of the victories, Heilig will sometimes brood on the seven losses
the Vikings have suffered this decade more than all of the wins.
Five of the seven defeats Eastern has had between 2000 and 2009 have
come in non-conference games against prominent teams in the field
hockey hotbed of Pennsylvania. Only one of those losses was a runaway;
a 4-1 defeat at Emmaus (Pa.) in 2005 that broke the team's 153-game
unbeaten streak.
"That was the only game that I think that we lost to the better team,"
Heilig says. "The rest of them, we outplayed them, and for the most
part outshot them, but the ball for whatever reason just didn't go in."
That included this year's penalty-stroke defeat to Kingston Wyoming
Seminary (Pa.) and a 2-1 loss at Emmaus.
The other two Eastern defeats this decade were a 3-2 regular-season
loss to Sewell Washington Township (Pa.) in September of 2008, and an
overtime loss to Group I state champion Summit Oak Knoll (N.J.) in the
2007 Tournament of Champions semifinals.
But in most of the other contests in which Eastern has played this
decade, they've been flat-out winners, which is something exceptional
in a sport like field hockey. Unlike many other sports in the
scholastic calender, goals are rare. Asingle missed trap, an umpire's
decision, a bad tackle, or an errant bounce on a grass pitch can
determine the outcome of a match.
Coaching an athletics team comes down to cold, hard numbers. Whether
they are the number of points scored or conceded, or the number of wins
or losses over the course of a season or career, numbers tell a story.
Even the best coaches in the history of a sport regularly lose perhaps
one in five games, yet become absolute legends in American culture.
Knute Rockne's winning percentage as a football coach at Notre Dame was
about 88 percent. UCLA's John Wooden won about 82 percent of his
basketball games, Tennessee's Pat Summitt about 84 percent of hers.
Vince
Lombardi won 74 percent of his football games, and Phil Jackson has won
a shade more than 70 percent of his NBA basketball games even with
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant on
his teams.
But Danyle Heilig has compiled a remarkable record of 275
victories, eight draws, and nine defeats in her 12 seasons at Eastern
and at Haddon Heights (N.J.), a winning percentage of
slightly more than 95 percent.
Of coaches in North American sport, only the women's soccer coaching
record of Anson Dorrance (around 94 percent), the women's lacrosse
record of Sharon Pfluger at The College of New Jersey (about 93
percent), and the men's basketball coaching record of Clair Bee at Long
Island University (about 91 percent) can compare to what Heilig has
done.
It makes one wonder what Heilig could do in other fields of endeavor.
She has been the coach for the school's girls' lacrosse team, but has
not had the same level of success. She has also been a coach in various
off-season competitions such as the AAU Junior Olympics and New Jersey
Level 1 Futures earlier in 2009 before the varsity's record-breaking
season.
"I had the best time with that, coaching a lot of players that I got to
see from the other side," Heilig said. "The competitive side of me
would love to see what I can do at the next level, and it would have to
be the right situation. But the nurturing side of me knows that I have
a family now, and I've got job security here at Eastern."
ALSO CONSIDERED:
Robin Chandler, Lakeville Hotchkiss School (Conn.) — Despite having
to plug in a dozen newcomers into the varsity and losing the team’s
captain in the preseason, team won eighth straight NEPSAC Class A
championship
Katrina Dobbins, Clark Johnson Regional (N.J.) — Won Union County
Tournament this year and put scares into state powers Moorestown and
Oak Knoll
Sue Felty, Annville-Cleona (Pa.) — Was a senior on the last team of
Dutchwomen to make the state tournament in 1985 before coaching the
team to this year’s tournament
Patrick Howley, Silver Spring James Hubert Blake (Md.) — A first-year
coach and a team full of newcomers parlay a five-win season a year ago
into a run to the state championship game
Amy McMullin, Portland Cheverus (Maine) — Fifth-year school won its way
to the state semifinal match
Mary Rivera, Westminster (Md.) — Team won first 18 games of the season
before falling 90 seconds short of a state championship
Leanne Roy, Ashburnham Oakmont (Mass.) — Won the tough Western
Massachusetts section for the first time in 25 years
Julie Stephens, Denver (Colo.) East — Program had never won a state
tournament game in 10 tries before making it all the way to this year’s
state final
Joe Tornetta, Malvern Great Valley (Pa.) — Made state tournament for
the first time since 1979
Kathy Waite, Fallbrook (Calif.) Union – Led team to first
appearance in the final of the Serra Invitational in program history
and was a game away from winning its first CIF sectional title since
1991
Wendy Wilson, Yorktown Tabb (Va.) — Undefeated the last two seasons,
showed itself as a force not only against small schools, but against
larger ones
