Kelly Amonte Hiller won one of the most useless prizes in Chicago on Monday.The Chicago Tribune unofficially named Northwestern’s lacrosse coach the best coach in Chicago.
I should caution this proclamation came in the form of a chart on page 2 of the sports section, which placed all Chicago-area coaches on a spectrum in terms of the number of championships the coach has won and the amount of trust the paper has in the coach. Amonte Hiller was all the way in the upper right-hand corner, signaling that the Tribune trusts her and that she has won a bunch of titles.
However, the chart forced me to think about just how much Amonte Hiller means not only to the lacrosse program, but also to NU as a whole. It has made me question where she ranks in terms of the greatest coaches in the Wildcats’ history, let alone the present day.
I’m not going to spend much time on persuading you fine readers that Amonte Hiller is the best coach at NU in the present because I only have so many words to use. If you need any convincing, look at your right hand – or left if you want to be difficult – and imagine if all of your fingers had rings. Now look at your other hand and pretend two of those fingers had rings.
That would be how many national championships Amonte Hiller has won at NU, seven more than any other coach. If that doesn’t convince you, then you can tweet at me or email me, and I’ll be happy to listen and critique your argument.
Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, I have about 250 words to explain why Kelly Amonte Hiller is the best coach NU has ever had and probably ever will have.
The titles are probably the most compelling argument in her favor, but I won’t use those in this discussion. I could look at her win-loss record, which stands at a sparking 215-32, but I will limit myself by not relying on the simple stats and use a high-tech evaluation tool — the eyeballs.
Her players’ list of accomplishments for 12 years at NU is simply remarkable. NU players have won the Honda Sports Award seven times, the Tewaarton Trophy five times and have been named All-Americans by the IWLCA 41 times including 23 first-team designations. But that is not what makes Amonte Hiller a great coach.
It is no secret what she has done is nothing short of remarkable. She has taken an East Coast sport and made it popular in the Midwest. She created the game plan to immediate success that other coaches are now trying to replicate across the country.
The key word here is “trying” because no one has been able to find the success Amonte Hiller did. No coach has been able to match what she has accomplished because no other coach is of the quality of Kelly Amonte Hiller.
Only the greats can build a program as quickly as Amonte Hiller has and keep it at the top for as long as she has. Almost every other coach at NU has someone they could thank for getting the program to the level it is currently at.
Amonte Hiller only has herself to thank for taking the Cats to new heights.
