Monica Dennis named United States Coach of the Year

Monica Dennis, head coach of Grosse Pointe South (Mich.) was named United States Coach of the Year for the 2004 field hockey season by TopOfTheCircle.com, the market leader in scholastic field hockey.

(PRWEB) December 28, 2004 -- Monica Dennis, whose laid-back and non-authoritarian coaching style allowed her players to find their way to the 2004 Michigan Field Hockey Association state championship in the first year of varsity existence for Grosse Pointe South, was named United States Coach of the Year by TopOfTheCircle.com.

"Monica Dennis has never been to a Positive Coaching Alliance meeting, or read the upcoming Horst Wein book 'Developing Game Intelligence,' but has hit upon the way to reach young athletes and given the freedom to succeed," said TopOfTheCircle.com founder Al Mattei. "She has built the program beautifully since taking over the Grosse Pointe hockey club program in 2002."

At the time, she inherited the Grosse Pointe Field Hockey Club, was at the time not recognizable as a varsity team. It was a cooperative team where students from Grosse Pointe North High School and Grosse Pointe South High School paid to play on whatever fields were available at schools in the town located about 10 miles east-northeast of Detroit.

"We were at the bottom of the totem pole, so we got whatever was left over, and there was no concern as to whether it was a suitable field or not. My first year at Fisher Middle School, we called our field 'The Sahara,' because by the end of the season, there would be no grass. It was flat and fast, but by the end of the season, we could count about 10 blades of grass, and schools wouldn't be used to it," Dennis says. "Last year, we were at Pierce Middle School which was kind of scary because when you hit a ball, it would hit a clump of grass or whatever and the ball go flying. And we were also pinched in on each side of the field by two manhole covers; we had to put like 10 cones in the area so there would be no issue, because God forbid anything would happen there."

Grosse Pointe's club team was obligated to play a full schedule in the Michigan Field Hockey Association against well-funded private- and public-school varsity programs.

But a funny thing happened in her first couple of years as club coach. Girls from both Grosse Pointe North and Grosse Pointe South started coming out for the team in droves.

"The numbers were so high," Dennis says. "Why were they all wanting to come out and play field hockey? I had tennis players, basketball, and all these great athletes. Some of them didn't like their coach. Others thought that, by playing on a team with higher numbers, you had a better opportunity to go to college."

Some of the players on the 15-1-2 Blue Devils team had played with the hockey club for several years, and others had only known GPS varsity life starting in 2004. But regardless, their collective inexperience before finding the game was enormous.

"The thing is, I had exactly three girls on the team who had touched a field hockey stick before coming to the high school," Dennis says. "Bringing out the best in others: what better thing can you do for your players? And that goes beyond field hockey."

TopOfTheCircle.com, founded in 1998, is the largest scholastic field hockey website in the world. It covers all aspects of the American field hockey community, from club to college, from coast to coast.

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