Stacey Eversley resigns, Lehigh field hockey searches for new coach

The search begins for a new head coach of Lehigh’s field hockey team after Stacey Eversley stepped down following five years in the position.

“My decision was not sudden,” Eversley said in an email. “It was very hard to leave the team and Lehigh, but it was what was best for my family.”

Eversley’s term as head coach officially ended at the end of January 2016.

Eversley has two small children, the youngest of which was born last spring, and her husband lives in Maryland. Eversley used to bring her kids to practice with her and commute back and forth from Maryland to Lehigh as often as she could.

“It just got to be too tough,” said Joe Sterrett, Lehigh’s dean of athletics.

Sterrett said that Eversley approached him towards the end of the team’s 2015 season and told him that she was thinking about leaving, but she didn’t officially make the call until after the holiday season.

It was the team that she told first, Eversley said. She cites telling the women and staff as the hardest part of the decision. The news was broken in an email sent out at the beginning of January.

“We got together as a team right when we got back and have really been pushing and getting ready for a new coach,” junior goalkeeper Julia Ward said.

The Mountain Hawks came off of a rough season, finishing 5-13 overall. Ward said that the team felt that it needed to work to push itself personally in order to work together with the team and coaches. Eversley’s decision, however, was not a surprise to her.

“We kind of wondered if she would want to make her family a whole family,” Ward said. “Our captain texted us saying ‘Get ready, it’s going to be OK, we will work as a team, we will push through it.’ So I think we kind of took it in stride.”

Sterrett said that Stacey Shiffert, the associate athletic director for business and budget, is now heading the effort to find a new head coach before the spring season begins.

Sterrett explained the process, saying that the school posted the open position on the NCAA page, the National Field Hockey website and Lehigh’s human resources page. There were about 25 applicants.

Shiffert then screens all the applicants, narrowing it down between six and 10 applicants with whom she conducts telephone interviews, Sterrett said. He explained that most of the telephone interviews were done the week of Feb. 1, but a few spilled over into the early parts of the following week.

After the phone interview process, Shiffert will select around three to four candidates to come on campus and meet some of the staff in athletics, which Sterrett said they hope to have happen by the end of this week. Athletics will then make its selection based off of the campus visits.

“We hope to have a coach on board by the time (the team) get back outdoors,” Sterrett said. “I don’t see a reason why that couldn’t happen.”

Sterrett is hopeful to have a new coach signed on by the end of February, but he said he’s understanding that the candidate may be coming from another job and may need time to leave. The goal is to have someone on campus by the end of spring break.

Sterrett said that while it is unfortunate to lose a quality person in the position, Eversley stepped down in almost an ideal time for Lehigh to find her replacement. She stepped down after the 2015 season and before the team got back into the full swing of practice and its season. It gave Athletics time to go through the whole process without rushing to find a coach. He said Eversley had already finished the recruiting process for next year’s class.

For now, the team is on its own for practice and are all on a level playing field with a new coach coming in for the upcoming spring season.