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Many Ivy League players return to their alma mater or another Ivy school to coach, whether in the short or long term, all with the goal of passing on the experience that they have gained in college. Current Dartmouth cross country coach Ellen O’Neil graduated from Dartmouth in 1987 after a standout career in cross country and track. After graduation, O’Neil returned to her home in Manchester, New Hampshire, and began teaching school. But she could not rid herself of the Ivy League athletic bug, and returned to Dartmouth in the fall of 1992 as head coach of women’s cross country. Her teams were Ivy champions from 1994 to 1997 and qualified for the NCAA championships from 1992 to 1997, attaining fourth place in 1997, their highest finish and the second-highest Ivy finish. But aside from the victories, O’Neil has found her greatest satisfaction coaching the serious students she’s found in the League, saying she has “a great desire to coach only those who are intrinsically motivated, and such student-athletes are attracted to the Ivy League.”
One of O’Neil’s students proved her mettle in the fall of 1998, when the Big Green needed an upset victory over powerhouse Providence College to qualify for the NCAAs, but had to run in six inches of slushy snow and knew gutsy performances would be required to compete. Sophomore Susan Ashlock, says O’Neil, “did just that. With just 200 meters into the race, she was clipped by an opponent’s one-inch spike, slicing a segment of her knee. With blood gushing down her knee, Susan persevered
for another three miles, much to the awe of spectators. She crossed the finish line, learned of our team’s upset victory, rejoiced for a moment — and was rushed to Mass General for ten stitches!”
Another coach who returned to the school where she competed is swimmer Stephanie Wriede, whose decision to attend Harvard in 1988 had been partly motivated by her respect for Coach Maura Costin Scalise. Wriede recalls that Scalise “truly seemed to empower her swimmers, had a great sense of balancing fun and hard work.” A number of years after graduation, Wriede leaped at the chance to return to Harvard as an assistant to Scalise, and then was hired to succeed her mentor when she retired. Wriede still takes her inspiration from what Scalise taught her as a swimmer and assistant coach: “The idea that coaching was not necessarily about just telling someone to do laps and yelling at them if they swam slow, but that it was so much more than that. That it was learning about yourself, about who you are, about how you raced, about how you interacted with other teammates. Maura … made us think about what worked for us. I have always taken that to heart, and I try to do that with my swimmers now.”
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