Lauren Orlandos ’04
Assistant Coach, Women’s Soccer

Deeecent player herself for the Pilots: All-American and defensive linchpin of the 2002 national championship team. Went on to play professionally with the New York Power of the WUSA, where she teamed with another deft former Pilot, Tiffeny Milbrett ’95. Returned to The Bluff to coach last year, and “it’s been a learning curve, different every day,” she says. “Teaching the game is very different from playing it, and it’s still easier for me to show something than to explain and articulate and elicit from someone else. I’m so busy learning the language of coaching — how to be a professor of soccer, in a sense, like Clive Charles was for us before he died. I’m learning to see the game in a different way, you know? There are so many ways to see it, as player, as fan, as recruiter, as teacher.

  “What’s been most fun for me is learning to see the players in a different way than I did as a teammate. I see them much more now as young women rising to maturity. To see them grow confident, to see them deepen as people, to see their worlds expand, that’s been a lovely surprise, and it happens so fast, they change so quickly from year to year….”