A Recipe for Greatness: Faith, Florida and the McCord Family

As the sun began to set on Corbett Stadium on the campus of the University of South Florida — creating a blood orange hue over the greater Tampa area — Sofia Chepenik marched out to the draw circle.

As she navigated to midfield, she panned from left to right on the opposing side of Corbett.

She saw 2,386 fans on the edge of their seats, awaiting the first draw in the history of South Florida women’s lacrosse. She saw the Beef Studs, a student-led fan group that paints their bodies green and gold for athletic events, many of whom were watching lacrosse for the first time. She saw the Sun Dolls, a student dance team, dressed in green and gold along with the cheerleading squad. She saw the Herd of Thunder Marching Band standing on the hill behind the away goal, ready to erupt.

“I was looking around knowing how much work we put into this moment, and just how grateful I was to be part of it, and to wear USF across my chest,” Chepenik said.

As the crowd rose to meet the moment, a yellow lacrosse ball flew into the air and Chepenik pulled it down like she had done so many times before. After two years of planning, recruiting, marketing and waiting anxiously, South Florida women’s lacrosse had officially joined the ranks of Division I women’s lacrosse.

Less than a minute later, Julianna George charged from goal-line extended and beat her defender to score the first goal in program history, as the band, cheerleaders and Sun Dolls serenaded her from the sidelines. The scene could only be described as surreal.

“The music’s blasting, the fans are going crazy,” redshirt freshman Claire Natoli said. “I couldn’t believe it. I remember every moment so vividly.”

“I was like, ‘Holy jeepers!” assistant coach Brittney Orashen said. “I’ve been to Sweet 16s, but there were more people here for this opening game. It was remarkable. That was the first thing I recognized, and I was blown away.”

The scene on Feb. 7 in Tampa was reminiscent of a college football or basketball game, only with a more personal feel. Mindy McCord, the former Jacksonville coach who joined the South Florida women’s lacrosse program in 2022, wanted a spectacle that would capture the attention of not just lacrosse fans, but the greater Tampa community.

In her 11 seasons building the foundation for Jacksonville, McCord saw how much a community could be inspired by the success of a women’s lacrosse program, and she took the job at USF believing there was still more potential.

“We were like, ‘Why does this have to be like how other lacrosse programs are?’” McCord said. “When you do something new, you get to create your own traditions. You get to do it the way you want. We went to these basketball and football games and asked, ‘Why can’t they be a part of this energy for lacrosse?’ We wanted the whole community to be part of this.”

McCord and her husband, Paul, spent two years recruiting the future of South Florida, building a culture that could stand the test of time.

At Jacksonville, a school of nearly 4,000 students, Mindy McCord built a perennial NCAA tournament team. At South Florida, a university 10 times larger, she saw a market ready to explode.

The Bulls are just 11 games into their inaugural season, but they’ve already made progress in galvanizing the community — from friends and family to those seeing the sport for the first time.

“I’m a big fan of this program,” said Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, the father of USF graduate attacker Alison Harbaugh. “They’re just getting started, and they’re doing really well.”

As the Bulls celebrated a 19-6 victory over Kennesaw State, fireworks burst into the sky. Players hugged each other and watched along with thousands of fans, ringing in what South Florida hopes is the start of the next Division I powerhouse.

“With the talent that we currently have and the culture we are currently building, this is something that’s built to last,” Natoli said. “It’s going to go the distance.”

THE LAUNCH OF THE JACKSONVILLE PROGRAM, and the growth of lacrosse in the North Florida region, might have something to do with legendary NFL coach Jack Del Rio.

Del Rio, the Super Bowl champion linebackers coach for the Ravens in 2001, became the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars two years later. As he assembled his staff, he called his former Ravens colleague, Paul McCord.

“Do you want to come with me?” Del Rio asked.

Paul McCord ended his call with Del Rio and made another one in quick succession.

“Do you want to move to Florida?” Paul asked his wife, then the McDaniel field hockey and women’s lacrosse coach.

“I’ve got a good team,” she said. “I want to stay here.”

After a few days of weighing their option, the McCords decided to relocate to Jacksonville, where Paul McCord spent one season as the assistant special teams and strength coach.

At that time, members of the Jaguars sent the McCords links to lacrosse organizations sprouting up in the area. Mindy McCord, jumped right in, working with local clubs to further her passion. It didn’t take long for the couple to launch their own club (LaxManiax) and high school programs (Mindy at Nease and Paul at Bartram Trail).

“As athletes, we have an identity in the sport,” Mindy McCord said. “I didn’t have an identity, and I was sad. Paul is the entrepreneur by nature, and he had this strategic plan to grow lacrosse at the youth level. My passion became helping kids live their dreams and get to college.”

As they typically do, the McCords hit the ground running — putting fliers into schools for children to learn about lacrosse, lobbying for the sport to be sanctioned at the high school level, driving an RV with LaxManiax branding to raise awareness and even coaching opposing schools during the high school season.

“We learned very quickly that we could not coach against each other,” Mindy McCord said.

“Let’s just say that, win or lose, I slept on the couch,” Paul McCord joked.

Eventually, the growing interest in lacrosse in the state led to the launch of college lacrosse programs like Rollins and Florida. The McCords began reaching out to colleges across the state to see whether the schools would allow them to consult on whether to launch a lacrosse program.

By 2008, Jacksonville athletic director Alan Verlander had enough faith to approach the McCords about the prospect of adding lacrosse. Paul McCord put together a five-year business plan and showed leadership the progress he and his wife had already made to grow the game.

Once Jacksonville announced the addition of women’s lacrosse, it didn’t have to look far for its first head coach.

“When they started the hiring process, they asked, ‘Do you want to be the coach?’” Mindy McCord said. “I’m like, ‘No, no, no. I’m a Division III coach, I don’t know the compliance for Division I. They’re like, ‘You’re fine. You’ll learn that.’”

Mindy McCord, who came to Florida “kicking and screaming,” according to her husband, was then tasked with being an architect.

“Quickly, it became, ‘How do you put a team together with one scholarship?’” Paul McCord said. “We prayed for people to come our way and find the right people to come start this program.”

Orashen was a young and at times naïve lacrosse player out of Lebanon, N.J., looking to fulfill her dream of playing Division I lacrosse. She didn’t lift weights. She had limited information on the recruiting scene. But Mindy McCord saw her first recruit — a player who never quit and played high-tempo throughout the game.

She offered Orashen part of her first-ever scholarship — a scholarship she shared with multiple members of the Class of 2011.

“I just said ‘sure’ on the spot,” Orashen said, laughing. “They were like, ‘What? OK, this kid’s coming.’ That’s when I first met Coach McCord, and we’ve been together ever since.”

Mindy McCord quickly established her pillars: Playing relentlessly and building a family environment. Those two traits are what sold Orashen and others to make the leap and join a program that had yet to step on the field.

Other recruits soon joined, but the McCords knew the hard work was ahead.

“My strategy was, we just have to recruit enough players and I have to grind them into the ground to see who’s committed to winning here,” Mindy McCord said. “That’s not my personality. There was nothing fun about it. There’s nothing easy about starting a program. I turned to Paul and asked him, ‘How can we create an experience that lacrosse is the best part of their day?’”

The coaching staff read “The Messiah Method,” a book detailing the foundation for the Messiah College soccer teams’ success. Paul McCord stepped in to help, using inspiration from the ESPN 30 for 30 film “Guru of Go” about former NBA coach Paul Westhead and his run-and-gun Loyola Marymount basketball teams that changed the sport.

“These girls liked working out, and they liked working hard,” Paul McCord said. “I thought, ‘We have to make the games a workout. Let’s run up and down the field as fast as we can and try to score.”

Orashen redshirted during Jacksonville's first season, which saw it finish with seven victories. After that, the Dolphins tallied 14 wins in 2011 and 15 wins in 2012, all against Division I opponents.

The McCords implemented an aggressive ride and defensive schemes that kept opposing offenses on their toes. By 2013, Jacksonville made its first NCAA tournament, winning the Atlantic Sun Conference — the first of nine appearances in 13 seasons.

Over the first few years, the McCords had to build the belief that Jacksonville could compete and win in Division I. Wins over teams like Stanford and Florida, and two trips to the NCAA tournament’s second round, helped ignite that confidence.

“We had established our brand of lacrosse,” said Orashen, who transitioned to assistant coach after her playing career. “Once we knew we were getting the right recruits, I said, ‘This thing’s going to take off.’ They believed in our values and our mission as a program.”

Mindy McCord had built Jacksonville to a perennial NCAA tournament team by 2021 when she first heard about South Florida adding a program.

When South Florida’s then-athletic director Michael Kelly gave her a call to talk about how to build a lacrosse program in Florida, it was hard not to notice the similarities between the two visions.

“When they talk about USF being on the rise, if we love growing things like Jacksonville, why wouldn’t you want to step in?” Mindy McCord remembered thinking. “Nothing was wrong to jump ship, but we looked at it as we’re growing the game again. All I can tell you is the Red Sea parted, and I knew that was the path I was supposed to go down.”

BEFORE MOST SOUTH FLORIDA GAMES, Natoli will tell anyone within earshot (aka her locker neighbors) her prediction for the day.

I’m going to score today.

The reaction is usually light-hearted for the middie that spends plenty of time on defense. She hadn’t even recorded a shot through South Florida’s first eight games.

“It’s been a bit of a joke,” she said. “Like I’m going to take it from low defense and score.”

On March 15, Natoli watched as teammate Paige Pagano stopped a free position shot in the fourth quarter against Temple. The ball trickled toward Natoli, who scooped it, sped through the midfield and saw daylight.

Jackpot.

Natoli barreled past the restraining line and into the 12-meter fan, eyes locked in on the cage. She hit her defender with a roll dodge and charged forward, bouncing a shot past Temple goalie Taylor Grollman for her first career goal.

“I was losing my mind,” Natoli said. “Just seeing everyone’s reaction to these first career goals has been awesome.”

The bench erupted. Natoli screamed as she embraced her teammates on the field. The Bulls’ cheerleaders led the crowd. In a season in which many of South Florida’s first-year players have scored for the first time, Natoli’s felt different.

The redshirt freshman from Doylestown, Pa., was the first recruit in the history of South Florida. She decided to join a program that had no other commitments, even without visiting campus, based on her belief in Mindy McCord.

Natoli originally committed to play for Mindy McCord in 2023 — at Jacksonville.

Just a few months later, McCord informed her recruits that she was taking the USF job. Natoli put her faith in a coach she trusted, and she decided to follow her.

“They say don’t pick a college for a coach, but I did anyway,” she said. “How can you not? It makes such a big impact on your life in college. She was coming here to build a legacy, build a new culture. She knows what she’s doing. Even when it was just her as the coach and me as our first recruit, I knew we were going to build something big.”

Natoli then had to wait for the family around her to form. Much like being the first person to join a Zoom call, Natoli anxiously awaited a human connection to South Florida.

She created a group chat and looped in the next few recruits, including club teammate Brooke Hill and Maryland native Grace Brukiewa.

“I texted them and said, ‘This is our team right here,’” Natoli remembered. “We laughed about it, but it was true at that moment.”

Once she heard about a new commit, she’d find her Instagram and send a direct message, hoping to add another member to the chat.

Eventually, the 2024 recruiting class rounded out at 20 players, and met on campus with seven additional transfers in the fall of 2023 — including Chepenik, who dropped 53 points in her freshman season at Clemson.

“We all believed in the vision that we heard from Coach McCord,” Chepenik said. “I was going to be able to leave a legacy that was different than if I went to an established program.”

Chepenik grew up playing soccer in Jacksonville but discovered her passion for lacrosse when she attended a camp led by the McCords. The vision for lacrosse in Florida that the McCords outlined in 2013 came to fruition in the form of Chepenik.

“I don’t think little Sofia would have ever thought she’d be here,” Chepenik said, choking up. “Being able to come back to Florida and give back to the sport that has given me so much, it makes me proud.”

Together, the freshman class and the veteran transfers spent the 2023-24 NCAA season building a foundation for the program. Mindy and Paul McCord established the same fast-paced mentality and approach to defense that their Jacksonville teams once mastered.

South Florida hosted its first exhibition on Oct. 28, 2023, welcoming Division II powers Florida Southern and Saint Leo. Throughout the next year, the Bulls added as many talented teams as they could, hoping to replicate the challenges they’d face in their first season in Division I.

The Scottish National Team visited Tampa to battle South Florida in the spring of 2024. In the fall, the Bulls faced off against Florida, North Carolina, Maryland and Duke.

“We got plenty of experience and exposure to teach these kids how to win within our system in year one and do it with no bench at all,” Orashen said. “If we can figure that out, we are ready to make some power moves.”

South Florida was ready to take on its first season in 2025 but had an eye for the future. At a school that boasts nearly 50,000 students — and a robust athletic program that announced plans to build a 35,000-seat stadium that would be home to lacrosse — there was a belief that the South Florida women’s lacrosse program could, and will, grow more quickly than at Jacksonville.

“Mindy coached Jacksonville and made it a top 20 program in a matter of years,” Natoli said. “At USF, where we have a lot of resources, a supportive athletic facility and the support of the university, we’re going to build that even quicker here. It’s a recipe for greatness.”