“I certainly hope nothing changes,” head coach Chris Sailer said after achieving one of the highest honors in the sport.
Sailer was inducted Saturday in Hunt Valley, Md., near the Hall of Fame in Baltimore. She is the 13th Princetonian, second Tiger coach and first female Tiger to be tapped for the Hall of Fame, six years after current men’s coach Bill Tierney received the honor. Sailer, like Tierney, has helped lead her squad to national prominence.
Given the team’s tremendous success, it is no surprise that Sailer is hoping her personal accomplishment will not affect Princeton. Since she took the reins in 1986, Sailer’s teams have won three national titles — the most recent one coming in 2003 — and nine Ivy League championships. Sailer has been named the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association Division I Coach of the Year three times, and her 282 victories through the 2008 season rank her second among all active coaches.
Perhaps the truest measure of her success, however, is the staggering number of athletes she has helped to achieve their full potential: 21 first-team All-Americans, 39 first-team All-Ivy selections and eight Ivy League Players of the Year.
Her successes, though, have not all been in coaching. Like many other coaches, Sailer began her career on the playing field. A 1981 Harvard graduate, Sailer said she was part of the first generation to bring Ivy women’s lacrosse into its current form.
“When I first started at Harvard, the team was not very strong,” Sailer said. “[But when] I finished, we were national championship contenders … We were the first two Ivy League champions in women’s lacrosse.”
In college, Sailer earned All-Ivy status twice. Two years after her graduation, she was a member of the 1983 U.S. national team. She built up her confidence from her experience and brought that confidence to Princeton.
“I knew an Ivy team could win in women’s lacrosse, and I knew I had the passion to help the program grow,” Sailer said.
At the ceremony itself, Sailer was presented the award by one of the women involved in Sailer’s first two national championships. Kim Tortolani ’94, who was the captain of the 1994 national champion Princeton squad, introduced her former coach and eventual rival. As Georgetown’s head coach, Tortolani led the Hoyas to the national championship game against the Tigers in 2002, a match that Princeton won.
Sailer said the ceremony was “great, they do a really nice job,” but she added that she had been blindsided by the notification of her induction.
“I knew nothing about it until I opened the FedEx package right before the Final Four in May,” Sailer said.
Sailer said that she did not officially announce the news to the team, though eventually her players heard the news independently. She also noted that the players have not treated her any differently due to her status as a Hall of Fame inductee.
Being among so many Princetonians in the Hall “feels pretty incredible … I’m very humbled and honored,” Sailer said.
Ever a coach, however, Sailer remains focused on the upcoming season. She refused to dwell on her induction or even on last year. Following last season’s trip to the NCAA quarterfinals, in which the squad lost to eventual champion Northwestern, she has reason to be confident.
“We have a great team this year and a strong senior class,” Sailer said. “We’re about to take a team trip to Australia to play their World Cup team a couple of times. It’s an exciting time for Princeton lacrosse.”
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