Stonehill Lacrosse Star Returns To Coach

By Monique Walker, Globe Staff 

The 2003 lacrosse season was a special one for Katie Lambert and her Stonehill College teammates. Stonehill captured the Division 2 national championship and Lambert was honored as the Northeast-10 Conference Player of the Year.

A Thayer Academy graduate, Lambert cherished her four years at Stonehill so much that she turned down an assistant coaching position with the Skyhawks the following spring because she did not want to taint her memories.

But last month, an opportunity Lambert never expected arose: replacing her former coach, Michael Daly. She accepted, and this season, at 26 years old, she will lead her alma mater.

"I kind of left with the best feeling for Stonehill," Lambert said. "It had been the best four years of my life. . . . It's different now. I don't know the girls. It feels separate from what Stonehill was for me as a player."

Part of Lambert's fondness for the program came from playing for Daly, who started the varsity program in 1999. Daly resigned this summer to become an assistant women's lacrosse coach at the University of New Hampshire, his alma mater.

Daly led Stonehill to two NCAA championships (2003, 2005) in nine seasons. The program was 140-27 overall in that time and recorded nine consecutive Northeast-10 regular season championships.

Lambert was a part of that success and established herself as a "cornerstone in the foundation" of the program, according to Daly. She was the Northeast-10 Rookie of the Year in 2000 and was the conference's player of the year three consecutive seasons (2001-2003).

In each year, Daly could see Lambert's potential to be a coach. As a freshman she was quiet, but she led by example, Daly said. With each year she became more vocal and by her senior year she was calling the plays on the field.

"She had something special you can't coach or teach," Daly said. "She's such a competitor."

Lambert may have enjoyed playing, but she did not consider coaching. It took a friend to persuade her to become the head coach at Northeast-10 rival Merrimack College four years ago. Soon, she realized the position was right for her.

"I learned I'm a good coach," Lambert said. "It never really crossed my mind, but I also realized sports were such a big part of my life. I don't think I could ever take myself away from sports altogether."

In four seasons, Lambert led Merrimack to a 45-19 record and the team also won a school-record 12 games in 2005 and 2006. But this summer, Lambert resigned from Merrimack to put more time into running her gym, Go Figure, in Westwood. She also is getting married this month.

Four days after Lambert resigned, Daly called to tell her he was leaving. Lambert described the opportunity as one of the few that could pull her back into coaching, and she applied for the job. She also realized it may cause hard feelings at Merrimack among her former players.

"I still love my team, and I'm very proud of everything we accomplished" at Merrimack," Lambert said. ". . . They all worked really, really hard for me. If it wasn't for them, I certainly wouldn't have received this job."

Lambert now turns her focus to leading the Skyhawks in the spring. Even in less than 10 years, Lambert said she can see the growth of lacrosse around the area. From a time when few public schools had teams, "now you have 5-year-old kids going to youth camps for lacrosse," she said.

When the spring season begins, Stonehill will carry a streak of eight straight conference tournament titles and 68 straight conference wins.

The challenge that lies ahead is one that Daly said he believes Lambert can handle.

"She understands we've always been a program that we're not satisfied, and that helped us," Daly said. "She doesn't have to be a clone of me. I think she will take over the reins and continue the tradition of excellence and do things the right way."