As Jessica Lynch finishes her fall season for volleyball and starts her winter season for basketball, there is some relief knowing that she is no longer coaching all three seasons, marking only the second year since 2019 that she has coached less than three sports.  

Before stepping away from Lacrosse, Lynch was the assistant coach for the girls lacrosse team from 2019-2024. While she loved learning the sport from coach William Lindsay, and enjoyed working with the group of girls she was with, she started not being able to enjoy her life outside of school. “My life was consumed by school. I love the school a lot, but I needed a little bit more time for myself,” Lynch explained.

Unlike basketball and volleyball, the two other sports she coaches, Lynch had never played lacrosse before she started coaching, so learning a whole new sport was challenging. Lacrosse has a lot of little rules that she had to learn, but coach Lindsay was very patient while Lynch was training. Over time, she developed an eye for the sport. She started to see similarities between lacrosse and basketball with their defensive plays, which helped her out in the long run.   

Lynch believes Lacrosse helped her grow as a coach, and found it very hard to step away from it. But she knew the team was in good hands when Kelly Gilbert, who played lacrosse for Morgan, stepped up into the spot Lynch left. Lynch explained, “It made it a little bit easier for me to walk away because I knew that the team was in good hands.”

As there were challenges coaching all three sports, there were also a lot of benefits. “Sometimes I got to see the same athletes in different sports, which was really fun. Sometimes I got to see different athletes that maybe I wouldn’t necessarily work with. But I think it helped me solidify what coaching sports is,” explained Lynch

While she no longer does three sports, coaching two sports and juggling school is still challenging. But Lynch finds the motivation to do both. She enjoys working with kids that like what they are doing, because sometime in the classroom kids don’t enjoy math. “I love being able to go to practice when it’s been a hard day, or I’ve had kids that [act] crazy. I get to now go and be with a different group of kids and get to experience them doing something they enjoy,” she explained.

Lynch is focused on being a motivator for the kids on her team. Lynch explained, “I try to get kids to understand what it takes to be mentally tough and meet challenges when you’re faced with them, because that’s a lot of what sports is and a lot of what sports taught me.”

Lynch played basketball and volleyball throughout high school, and something that stuck with her is the connection a team needs to have. She said, “the most successful teams I was on were cohesive and enjoyed being together while having fun together, and they supported one another.”

Throughout the years, Lynch has gotten to know so many new people she may not have gotten the chance to talk to. As a head coach, Lynch

has had to adjust to staff turnover as well. When Laura Luther decided to step away from coaching volleyball after last season, health teacher from Eliot, Samantha Tropiano offered to be the new JV coach. But when she left for maternity leave, Shannon Robinson took over for a one-year position. 

While it was fun getting to know new people, it did pose as a challenge for Lynch. “It definitely poses a challenge because it just kind of lacks that continuity in building a program. So that has been hard, but there’s nobody I’ve worked with that I haven’t enjoyed working with,” explained Lynch.

While it is fun being a varsity coach for the volleyball team, she also loves being the JV coach for the girls’ basketball team. Lynch explained it by saying, “I enjoy having that control and working with higher skill levels. You’re able to be a little bit more competitive when you’re a varsity coach. Whereas with the JV, I enjoy doing that too, because it is a little less high stakes, it’s a little more fun, I can be less strict with the kids.”

Getting her spring season back, Lynch is able to catch up on work because that part of the year is always the most chaotic. Outside of school she enjoys going on hikes, which she doesn’t call “true hiking,” biking, and seeing her family. When asked, Lynch described herself outside of school by saying, “When I’m in school with kids, I feel like I have a more professional presence. Whereas when I’m outside of school, I can be a little bit more free and sarcastic.”