Following the commonly traveled player-turned-coach path, Lebanon Valley women’s lacrosse coach Jackie Dando has gone from executing game plans to creating them. In her first year as head coach, the West Chester, Pa., native is drawing from her past experiences—and her faith—to lead the Dutchmen lacrosse program and help athletes develop as self-confident women away from the game.

"However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.’” – 1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)

After wrapping up her college volleyball career at Michigan State University, Jen Jones assumed coaching would be a natural career choice. Instead, she followed God’s leading into the weight room and up to the training table. Now an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Texas A&M, Jones is focused on building athletes who are strong in both body and spirit.

When Jill Stephens filled the head coach vacancy at Florida Southern College left by AVCA Hall of Famer Lois Webb in 2001, not much changed within the program. Stephens was, after all, one of Webb's pupils, one of the greatest volleyball players in Moccasin history, and a member of the school’s athletics Hall of Fame. Now, 13 seasons later, Stephens sees a bit of herself in the young women she’s training, both in the game and in their faith through her involvement with the school’s FCA Huddle that she helped start as a student-athlete herself.

Selected Struggle: Striving

Dictionary definition: “To struggle vigorously.”

My definition: “To be consumed by angst. To not give everything to God and to worry constantly, feeling like the more you do, the more you are going to get done and achieve.”