This story initially appeared on Behind the Whistle, the official blog of the IWLCA, and is being republished with permission from the organization. Mary Schwartz is the former head coach at Roanoke College and is now the program director for Major Force Lacrosse.

Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I was introduced to the game of lacrosse in third grade. The year was 1970. Fast forward to July 2021. I had been playing, coaching and teaching this game for a very, very, very long time (51 years!).

Looking back on my collegiate coaching career beginning at Davidson College in 1995 and ending at Roanoke College last year, I truly am grateful for the 27 years! Let me be clear about this special profession — in the beginning, I did not pursue coaching. Coaching found me! 

I have had time to reflect on my years of coaching and how it all started. When you get older, you can look back and reflect on your past; evaluate what was good, what was bad, what challenges you faced and what you could have done better. If it wasn’t for me moving to Pittsburgh with my husband, getting a job that started at 4:00 a.m. (I worked for Snyder’s of Hanover driving a pretzel truck) in the morning and ending at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon, I might have never started coaching. The game of lacrosse was just starting to explode in the Pittsburgh area, and like I said … I wasn’t looking for a coaching job. Coaching found me.

My first lacrosse coaching job was with a brand-new program at Mt. Lebanon High School in Pittsburgh. I was the inaugural coach! I had 40 girls who had never played the game and me, someone who played the game for a long time but never coached the game. The 40 new girls and the new coach were figuring out how to do this together!

The more I coached, the more comfortable I became with this career. I coached high school for five years — three at Mt. Lebanon and two at Shady Side Academy. I quit my pretzel truck job and decided it was a good time to put my resume together and look for a college coaching position. 

Over the course of the 27 years of coaching at the collegiate level, I never missed a practice, except for the week after I had my second child, Daniel, who was born February 13, 1998. I was at practice the day I went into the hospital and back on the field a week later! Burn out is big in this profession. So many times we get to the end of the season going 100 mph, and then it just stops, like hitting a wall! The longevity of coaches will depend on rest, taking time off, making sure the job doesn’t overtake you. How many coaches have said it’s time way too early?

So, how did I know it was time for me to retire from college coaching? When I was a student-athlete at Maryland, before every game, I would get super excited and extremely nervous at the same time. It would always happen when I would walk out on the field right after our Terp cheer. I would get this feeling like butterflies were in my stomach. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. When I started coaching, I would get the same feeling right before and after the team cheer — butterflies. I remember having a conversation with another coach one day who asked me the question, “When do you think you will retire, when will you know its time?” I responded with, “When I stop having the excitement to compete … when I no longer get butterflies.”

Well, during the spring of 2021, after going through the year of disappointments that was 2020, I started to notice that the excitement for the game was becoming distant. There were so many other things that coaches were having to do that actually coaching the game became secondary, and I started to realize that my time was coming to an end. I will have to say it was one of the best seasons we have had in a long time at Roanoke, both on and off the field. We had a great group of seniors, and we were winning. But what was missing for me was the butterflies. I remember warming up my senior goalie for our last home game of the 2021 season. I had not yet made the decision that I was leaving coaching, but somehow, I knew that this would be the last time that I would be warming up a goalie at Roanoke College in Kerr Stadium.

I went back and forth with, “Should I stay, or should I go?” — which, by the way, is a great song from The Clash. I could stay one more year to be there to see the eight seniors graduate, but what if I stay one year too long and things don’t go well? These are all real conversations that coaches have with themselves.

I spent a few months in the beginning of the summer reflecting and asking myself, “Is it time?” After much thought, prayer and conversation with my family, I decided that it was time to say goodbye to Roanoke and to college coaching.  

When a recruit would be on campus and we would be meeting in my office, so many of them would ask me, “Coach, if I decide to come to Roanoke, will you be here for my four years?” I would answer and say that is an unfair question to ask, and then tell them that I was not looking to go anywhere else, Roanoke College is my forever home and if I were to leave, it would not be for another college coaching job.

I look back on my 27 years of coaching this game at the collegiate level, and I am thankful for the opportunities it has given me, my husband and my three grown children. They truly are my biggest fans. My oldest daughter was 2 years old when we moved to Charlotte and started this journey at Davidson. Now fast forward to my youngest child, who was 19 when the journey came to end at Roanoke.

Each coach has their own journey to play out. Knowing when it’s time to step down will be different for each coach. For me, the excitement and joy were gone. I still love the game of lacrosse and will continue to be a teacher of the game. I still run the girl’s side of the TGS goalie schools in the summer, and I am the current goalie coach for the Puerto Rico national team that will be competing this summer in the [World Lacrosse Women’s World Championship], and I have taken on a new roll as the program director for Major Force Lacrosse Club.

I might not be coaching at the college level anymore but still and will always be a teacher of the game.