August 25, 2020
Schwartz Named To Staff For Women's National Team
Puerto Rico Lacrosse is excited to announce the addition of Mary Schwartz to the 2021 Women's Senior National Team staff. Schwartz, a former four-year letter winner as a goalie at the University of Maryland, and currently serving as Roanoke College's Women's Lacrosse Head Coach, rounds out the coaching staff and will serve as the Women's National Team goalie coach.
When Puerto Rico Lacrosse announced the openings for Women's National Team coaching positions via our social media platforms, Coach Schwartz's resume was one of the overwhelming numbers of submissions received. Through her impressive achievements as a player and coach, and our perception that she was truly about giving back to the lacrosse community and the mission of Puerto Rico Lacrosse, her inquiry quickly rose to the top of the candidates list. Our Women's National Team Head Coach, Natalie Bermudez led a thorough screening process and established the short list of candidates that would further be interviewed prior to final selections. Based on the exceptional success of the 2019 Women's U19 National Team performance, Coach Bermudez identified what was the benchmark for establishing a robust coaching staff this round of selections. She wanted to make her choices based on their respective achievements, but also during the interviews gain a sense of their interest and commitment to the development of our mission of bringing the game to the island of Puerto Rico.
With Coach Schwartz joining the exceptionally diverse staff of coaches, Coach Bermudez is extremely optimistic to further expand the team's athletic prowess and representation of Puerto Rico during the 2021 Women's World Championships.
During the present Covid-19 restrictions, our challenges have been equal to other organizations establishing training sessions and team development. However, this hasn't prevented an aggressive virtual training program from being implemented. Our coaches are committed to providing training, but simply delivered through a virtual environment. The instructional videos filmed by the coaches cover a wide array of demonstrations from stretching to specific line drills. As a whole, Puerto Rico Lacrosse has maintained a careful adherence to local and national restrictions and guidelines for the protection of these athletes. To date, the frequent interactions have all been conducted virtually, but the team is composed of high caliber and talented players so this slight variation of training is still effective.
Our expectations are once the restrictions are lifted, these players will arrive at our training sessions prepared and focused as if they were training in person from day one. We are more than fortunate to have Coach Schwartz's experience and guidance assisting with developing this exceptional chapter in our organization's history.