BOULDER — Ann Elliott could easily have stayed in the lacrosse-friendly environs of Northwestern, where she played on three NCAA Division I women’s championship teams and helped three others win titles as an assistant coach. It would have been the safer path probably, to continue serving as an apprentice to noted head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller with an eye on taking over some day.
Instead, Elliott walked away from all that to take the coaching job at a school that won’t play its first league game until the spring of 2014. As the newly appointed coach of the Colorado Buffaloes women’s lacrosse team, Elliott doesn’t even have her first official recruit yet. But as hectic as it may be to start a program from the ground up, the 27-year-old native of Shaker Heights, Ohio, is loving every minute of it.
“To have the opportunity to come out here and build my own program was something that I’ve always dreamed of. It’s just such a great thing to be able to build a culture, to build a program that people are going to be invested in and be proud to be a part of,” Elliott said.
Lacrosse capital of the West
If Elliott sounds confident the Buffs will be a future power in women’s lacrosse, it’s no wonder. In addition to all her success as a player and coach at Northwestern, she comes to a state that has seen a tremendous boom in the popularity of the sport in the past decade. Whereas it once was a fringe sport relegated to the back pages, lacrosse in Colorado now boasts highly recruited high-school players to some of nation’s top programs, along with a men’s coach at the University of Denver — Bill Tierney — who would be on anyone’s Mount Rushmore of legendary lacrosse figures.
As Tierney has done at DU after a Lombardi-like coaching career at Princeton, Elliott expects to put CU on the map for college lacrosse. But she knows it will take some time.
“We don’t have the history as a program to show kids. But this is a school and a place that sells itself,” Elliott said. “Right now, we’re just trying to get out there and communicate with kids, try to get them on campus and see if there’s a fit with our program we want to build at CU. It’s exciting. We have a lot to draw on talent-wise right here in Colorado.”
It had been 16 years since CU had added a new Division I program, when women’s lacrosse was added this spring. CU athletic director Mike Bohn had been wanting to add a new sport, and the inclusion of a women’s team would help fulfill Title IX commitments as well.
When it came to finding his first coach, Bohn ultimately was won over by Elliott’s sheer enthusiasm for the challenge.
“She’s young, but she’s already had such a proven track record of success in the sport at the highest level,” Bohn said. “She just seemed like the perfect person to help build a new lacrosse program.”
The Buffs will start non-league play in the fall of 2013, but won’t play in the Pac-12 until 2014. The program will offer 12 scholarships yearly. One player who has verbally committed — but hasn’t signed — is Cherry Creek midfielder/attack Tori Link.
What it takes to win
“I thought about it for a few days and I was like, ‘How can I turn this down? I love Colorado, I’ve lived here my whole life,’ ” Link told the Boulder Camera recently.
For the next few months, Elliott not only will try to settle into a residence in Boulder, but probably have to live out of suitcase a lot as well. She’ll be on the road recruiting much of the time, she said, trying to get a recruiting jump on the most talented players from around the nation who will enter their senior years this fall.
“Unselfishness and teamwork was definitely the No. 1 thing I learned at Northwestern about what it takes to win,” said Elliott, a defender in her playing days. “Those are the kinds of things we will always stress here. When you have that, anything is possible.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
Elliott in charge
Previously offering lacrosse only as a club sport, Colorado added women’s lacrosse as its 17th intercollegiate sport this year. It had been 16 years since a new sport had been added by the school:
Ann Elliott, a six-time national champion as a player and assistant coach at Northwestern, was named CU’s first head coach in March.
The program will offer 12 scholarships yearly.
Cherry Creek senior-to-be Tori Link has verbally committed to the school, but has not signed.
