Ms. Sylvia, a dedicated mentor at Oliver Ames High School who balances coaching field hockey, being a chemistry teacher and a mother all at once. 

Ms. Sylvia has always been passionate about field hockey. She played in college at Stonehill college and later she became the field hockey coach at Oliver Ames High School. Outside of being a coach, she also handles the responsibilities of being a mother and also teaches Chemistry to juniors and Forensic Science. 

“It can definitely be a lot. Like today I have to go pick up my son from daycare and he is just gonna be on the sideline with me for the game. But a lot of times you just have to find the fun in everything and find the joy. Cause it’s when you don’t have any joy is when everything starts to get to be a lot.

Ms. Sylvia, who went to a division 1 school for field hockey, has a lot of experience around field hockey. This will be her 4th year coaching girls field hockey at Oliver Ames and sometimes it can be hard to differentiate roles between coach and captains. But Sylvia knows how to be direct but also incorporates positive reinforcement.

“I usually try to say a couple things that we are doing well in the game, but also point out things that we really need to work on so we are more successful. A lot of times if there are concerns then me and the captains will meet after games and have a check in conversation. We have pretty direct communication. We also have a strict behavior policy that we follow and a lot of negative interactions at first are taken care of by captains and then if the captains feel like they couldn’t fully address it then it gets to a coaching level. I usually try to let the captains take care of it.”

Although many people call her Ms. Sylvia, this certain group of girls call her Coach Sylvia. When she isn’t in the classroom teaching kids chemistry and helping kids go further academically, she is on the field coaching girls on how to get further sports wise. As Ms. Sylvia reflects on her coaching tactics, she delivers her answer

“To fix repeated mistakes, I use practice time to kinda go over those mistakes. I show it on my little whiteboard that I have too and then a lot of times I have my girls sorta identify repeated mistakes and then we talk through how we can fix it together. A lot of times our players will come up to me and ask me directly what I see and what I want them to work on and I usually give them one or two things for them to improve on. It’s more of trying to help themselves overall as a team is what I try to focus on” 

A lot of people don’t know it but coaching isn’t always easy. Ms. Sylvia makes coaching look easy even though behind the scenes a lot goes into it. Ms. Sylvia is very good at understanding what is going on even if she can’t relate to the situation. When there are hard times in a game she stands tall for her players and is an amazing example of what working hard looks like. 

“I think implementing more passing sequences in practice so we do this thing called a flow drill which they are literally just passing and moving the whole time and then also more team play of numbers up situations. Also in defense being more numbers down because of what happens often in a game. Doing more of that and also giving my players more of a voice seems what helps them the most. I think when they feel like they have a voice, they become more invested and more confident. So when they feel more invested, they are more likely to be more apt to actually improve and be more into the game, paying attention and to help others.”