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An avid reader of non-fiction, Kay devours anything to do with sports psychology or management. She marks passages and ideas to present to her team. Last year, she led discussions of the book, The Wisdom of Wolves, and how it involves working as a team and the emergence of leaders.

She will draw from any source to motivate. Two years ago, it was a song by Garth Brooks, largely because two of her players, Brandy Fisher '98 and Sara Cross '98, were big country music fans. She read the team the lyrics to one song—which talks about winning and being the best—before they played Minnesota in the semifinals.

They won. In the next game, the national title game, they were up by a goal with a period to go. Kay and assistant coach Joe Knox walked into the locker room and there were the players, holding hands, singing the entire song out loud along with the CD. "It was an unbelievable feeling," Kay says. "You didn't have to say anything. It just clicked." UNH won.

Kay has been hungry to win for a long time. She has coached hockey for 20 of her 36 years. After a shoulder injury her sophomore year ended her playing career at Providence College, she became a coach there. For a while, she worked full-time in medical sales and coached on the side.

"I walked away from a job with a Fortune 500 company, making $100,000 a year," says Kay, who started coaching at UNH in 1992. "Money's not what it's all about. You have to have a passion for this profession," she adds.

"I'd go to clinics and there would be 250 men and I'd be the only female," she says. "Obviously, that's not the easiest way to learn." Now when she teaches at hockey schools, boys come up to her and say, "I wish my mom could skate like you."

Her freshman year, Jessica Houle '00 and her new UNH volleyball teammates thought the coach must be joking. Jump to attention and line up. By height. Toes on the line. Shirts tucked in. In college?

"We kind of looked at each other," says Houle, now a senior. "Is she for real? I was kind of taken aback. I thought she was kidding."

Jill Hirschinger most decidedly was not kidding.

"I think my style would be classified a strong, very strong, disciplinarian style," Hirschinger says. "Almost like a military approach. I want them to be disciplined off the court and on the court."

She wants her players to always know where to be on the court once the game begins, and to always know what is expected of them.

UNH's volleyball players come up from the locker room to practice in Lundholm Gymnasium in socks or sandals. In those opening moments, they can talk about classes. Guys. Whatever.

"But as soon as they get their shoes laced, that's it," Hirschinger says. "It's time to think about practice." Hirschinger's teams regularly compete during practice. Losers carry the box lunches and equipment on the next road trip. Competition helps keep practices, which often stress repetition, interesting.

"Volleyball is a ball control sport," Hirschinger says. "It's like golf, where you need to hit the ball over and over. You need to play over and over. You have to control the ball with three hits, so you need to have a well-rounded team. It's hard to hide anybody in volleyball. You really depend on everybody."

One of Hirschinger's directives is, "Confront or shut up." If two male athletes argue, they will have it out, physically or verbally, and then get on with things, Hirschinger asserts. Two females are more apt to quietly enlist the support of teammates, and soon the team is divided. She tells of hearing Tony DiCicco, the coach of the U. S. World Cup-winning women's soccer team, talk about the differences between coaching men and women.

"He said that if you tell a team of women that only two of them are in shape, all the women will think, 'I'm out of shape.' The men will think, 'I'm in shape and everyone else is out of shape.' When you yell at men or raise your voice, they take it as a challenge. Women take it more as an insult, and really internalize things."

Hirschinger, 42, came to UNH from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., to take over a team that had gone 4-17 in 1995, and was being upgraded from club to varsity status. Hirschinger wasn't entirely sure she wanted to come East. She expects to win and she wasn't sure she could, or wanted to, handle the tough times and losing that come with a new program.

She decided to come, and then an odd thing happened during a dismal 6-26 season. The coach had fun. Expectations were low and goals were set accordingly. Outclassed in most matches, UNH tried to pressure teams into calling a time out.

"I found they played better by my being positive," Hirschinger says. "It made me more of a motivator. To try to make it fun. It made me a better coach to take a lower level team and get the best out of them I could. And if I got better players and kept that philosophy, it would make us a better team."

Learning to be more positive wasn't the only surprise in store for Hirschinger. At the end of the first season, she received several phone messages from Sherry Mirts, the mother of freshman player Kim Mirts '01. The messages sounded desperate.

"I really thought Kim had cancer, or was dead from a car crash," Hirschinger recalls.

It turned out Kim was pregnant, and on the assumption it meant the end of her volleyball career, she and her mother packed her things. Hirschinger had a different plan. Kim could stay on the team, stay in school, and they would treat it like she was missing a year due to injury. Kim Mirts soon married her high school boyfriend, Gary Poen.

Never having faced the situation before, Hirschinger is surprised, and pleased, with how she handled it. UNH didn't lose a player. It gained a mascot in young Madison Lee, a regular at practices and games. Madie helps everyone keep things in perspective and makes players focus during practice. Hirschinger watches her language.

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