Last season, as her career in Oregon lacrosse began drawing to a close, events began to unfold that brought Jen Derby to a career she didn’t know she wanted.
In the process of finishing her master’s degree in education from the University while also capping the most decorated lacrosse career in Oregon history, Derby knew assistant coach Brooke Dieringer wouldn’t be returning to coach the 2009 season.
Derby thought, “I think I could do that.’
Now, she is, with another former Duck joining her on the sideline.
Derby, née May, and Jana Bradley, who is a volunteer staff member after finishing her career last season as well, are continuing in a line of former Jen Larsen players who have joined her on the sidelines at Oregon once their eligibility is over.
Beth Ames Hewitt went from an All-American career at North Carolina when Larsen was an assistant to one of Oregon’s original two assistants when the program debuted in 2004. She was replaced by former Tar Heel and Duck player Brooke Dieringer in 2007.
Hiring former players comes with its advantages, Larsen says, including a built-in loyalty to the program and connection with the team.
“There’s just a connection and a trust that goes both ways that I enjoy and with Jen and Jana, having them, they’ve been through everything that this program has endured,” Larsen said. “You can’t teach caring, so they have that innately.
“It’s not me saying, ‘Well, it used to be this way.’”
The fit, no matter how natural it appears now for both players, was hardly the job they expected once they finished their careers. Larsen approached Bradley about a position after last season, once she learned she would return for a fifth year to finish her degree. Derby’s decision came unannounced and unexpected.
“I literally approached her after practice one day and said, ‘I don’t really know how to do this but I think I could do Brooke’s job,’” Derby said.
Now she’s willing to admit that she didn’t know half of what the coaches’ day-to-day operational responsibilities were outside of coaching. Of the 15 Division I sports at Oregon, only men’s basketball, football, baseball and track and field and cross country have designated directors of operation on staff. That means full-time assistants like Derby and Robert Bray Jr., who has been at Oregon since 2004, take on the job of creating schedules, arranging flights, hotels, uniforms, food and transportation for all road contests and arrange practice times around other sports’ schedules while in Eugene.
The team’s recent trip to Denver last weekend served as an example of the outside work they do. Faced with a possible snowstorm that would postpone the game an extra day until Sunday, coaches scrambled to line up possible accommodations for another night in Denver. The game was played Saturday, as scheduled.
“I am absolutely thrown by how much stuff (Larsen and Bray) deal with,” Derby said. “Like the uniform color stitching for our uniforms of 2011. It’s like, what? We’re even thinking about that?”
“We have an itinerary of every single minute of what we do (on road trips),” Bradley said. “Going through as players you go through the motions with no idea of the process that made that happen.”
The characteristics that marked Derby and Bradley as players have translated into their coaching personalities. Derby is an excellent communicator, and playing at midfield allowed her to run seamlessly between offense and defense, much as how she can go back and forth between both groups during practices and games equally as easily. Derby was a four-time Mountain Pacific Sports Federation all-league pick, the program’s only All-American, and holds program records in five categories.
Bradley was a scorer on offense who took advantage of opportunities to score 111 goals in her career, third all-time at Oregon. Not one to lead vocally as a player, her communication has improved this season.
“You could tell (Derby) would be a natural coach,” senior Ilsa van den Berg said, saying her teaching experience is a perfect compliment to her time as a player. “But Jana was one who really didn’t really say a lot and you’ve seen huge changes. She sees a lot of things differently now.”
In many ways, Bradley acts as the liaison between coaches and players better than anyone considering she lives with seniors Anna Poponyak and Casey Rector and sophomore Alex Breiner. It was one of the disadvantages Larsen saw when she added her to the staff, but says both sides’ professionalism on the field has eased her worries.
After the initial strangeness of being coached by their roommate, Breiner said, the arrangement hasn’t been awkward.
“It was at first a little difficult but I’ve definitely gotten used to it and I think we’re all mature enough to know that when we’re on the field we owe her respect,” Breiner said.
Bradley, who cannot recruit but travels with the team, says she tries to work with the 16 freshmen on the roster partly to stay away from coaching her roommates, but also because she offers the perspective of being part of the original recruiting class at UO.
“I lived through that,” she said.
Like everyone on the team, the first week of coaching was the hardest on Derby. Seeing her number 12 uniform on freshman Jess Drummond confirmed the fact she was no longer on the team. Since then, even during the 24-hour workdays during spring break traveling with the team, both players-turned-coaches say they don’t regret their decisions in the least. Coaching could, in fact, be something they do for “a life thing,” Bradley said.
“I want to ride the coaching wave as long as possible,” Derby said.
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Role reversal: from player to coach
Daily Emerald
April 6, 2009
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