Time was running short in yet another big football game at Cowell Stadium. Lose, and just about any chance the University of New Hampshire had of making the playoffs was gone. Win, and hope remained. The problem was, the Wildcats were trailing Richmond. The offense had done little and had much to do.

Quarterback Chris Bresnahan '96 connected with one pass. Then another. The coaches in charge of UNH's offensive gameplan sent in plays, and Bresnahan, he, well, he ignored the coaches. Bill Bowes, the head football coach, in turn waved off his assistant coaches. Bowes liked what he was seeing.

The quarterback completed another pass. Then he hit Al Barrow '97 for a touchdown; UNH tied the game and won it with the extra point.

Bresnahan came of age as a football player that day. At the same time, assistant coach Sean McDonnell '78 picked up a coaching pointer from his boss. Bowes took a read on what was happening on the field and let the player play. Bresnahan had learned his lessons well, and it was time for the coaches to watch.

It is nearly three years later and Sean McDonnell, then the shunned offensive coordinator and now the new head coach, still gets excited as he rattles off details of the game.

"It was great watching Bres take the team down the field," McDonnell says. "He couldn't have done that two or three years before if there was $2 million dollars down there in the end zone. Watching kids get better and grow, that's the best part of the job. You couldn't pay me enough to do another job."

This kind of dedication to coaching is not unusual at UNH. Last year, UNH coaches won nine coach-of-the-year awards, including swimming coach Joshua Willman, who has won five such awards in the last seven years, and track and cross-country coach Jim Boulanger '75, with 13 awards in the last 16 years.

UNH teams are earning honors as well. Women's ice hockey won the national championship in 1998, and men's ice hockey played in the national title game for the first time last season. Other conference champions last year included field hockey, whose coach, Robin Balducci '85, has earned two coach-of-the-year awards, and women's volleyball, which chalked up its first undefeated conference season. Gymnastics is a consistently successful sport: coach Gail Goodspeed has led the team to four conference championships during her 21 years at UNH.

Behind these success stories are coaches who devote countless hours not only to leading their current team but also to recruiting the next one.

When asked why they coach, they talk about how a coach must love to work with kids, and have a passion for teaching and competing. Asked how they coach, they say coaches must see the big picture of scheduling and recruiting and molding a team. They and their assistants do the hidden detail work of drilling the skills. They communicate, motivate—and demand.

Much is expected of UNH's athletic teams and their coaches, especially in the highest-profile sports. Here's a look at just a few of them.

There is a small plaque on Karen Kay's busy desk. It reads: "Expect to Win."

Like most coaches, Kay does. And she expects her players to do the same. That's part of the reason that the Wildcat women were right back training and conditioning with only a two-week break after they lost in the national championship game last season. It's part of the reason why her players were expected to work out six days a week during the summer and regularly fax back a workout record.

It's also one of the reasons that UNH will, as usual, be considered one of the pre-season favorites in the ECAC. On the flip side, it's also a reason that Kay has trouble letting go of last season.

Kay and other coaches talk of raising the bar. A team accomplishes one goal, and sets a new one. The bar doesn't get any higher than when Kay's Wildcats won the women's ice hockey national championship in 1998. Naturally, Kay wanted to win another one last year.

Harvard got in the way, with a 6-5 overtime victory. Two years, two appearances in the title game? Excuse Kay if that gives her little solace. "To come that close, you really feel like there's something you could have done differently as a coach," she says. "I'll always be frustrated by that. You feel responsible."

Kelly McManus '02, a hockey forward, disagrees. "I'm a strong believer that a coach can only do so much," she says. "We were prepared to play that game. She can only do so much. She can't go out there and win it for us."

Kay agrees with that. She has been known to tell her players that she can't go over the boards and on the ice for them. "Yeah, that's one of her famous ones," McManus says. "We know that one very well."

Kay laughs. There was the time last season when her team was struggling a bit and Kay found that same quote in the paper, said by Boston Bruins coach Pat Burns. She promptly copied and distributed it to back up her point.

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.

Hirschinger, who no longer plays volleyball herself because of bad knees but is wild about jet-skiing, is still every bit the disciplinarian. Her players continue to line up at the start of every practice and before water breaks.

But she's not screaming and yelling quite as much as before. Of course, she doesn't have nearly as much to scream and yell about. Two years ago, UNH brought home a 23-10 season. Last year, the Wildcats were 24-11 with a tougher schedule, and then won the America East conference championship and went on to one round of the NCAA tournament. This year, the goals are again realistic: merely to win the America East and go at least one round further than last year.

And now when Jessica Houle coaches at volleyball camps and clinics, she, of course, has her kids line up, toes on the line. By height. Shirts tucked in.

It's doubtful that Sean McDonnell '78 possesses the doodling skill of Bill Bowes, master doodler. And it's unlikely that McDonnell will strike the commanding presence on a football practice field that Bowes, a bear of a man, conveyed for years out behind Mooradian Field at Cowell Stadium.

But count on this: Sean McDonnell plans to carry on the UNH tradition of tough, hard-nosed, winning football—21 winning seasons in 27 years and four conference championships—established under Bill Bowes.

Bowes has passed on the coaching whistle that he twirled and then twirled some more. Now 55, he plans to make up for some of the fishing, golfing and family time he missed these nearly three decades. McDonnell, who first came to play for Bowes in the mid-'70s and then came back to coach under him in 1991, picks up the whistle.

It's an old cliche, Bowes knows, but one he believes in: practice hard, play hard. "I wanted practice to be harder than a game, tougher," he says. "Games are supposed to be fun. Practice is never fun. It was never meant to be fun. Practices should be tough and grueling." Thus Bowes, never shy about yelling at a player during practice, tried to avoid that during games.

"To be yelled at or chided or belittled in front of fans or other people is not good," Bowes says. "I always felt you tried to make the games fun and you have the kids play a little looser."

If players are making mistakes in games, McDonnell has learned, the blame may lie in the coaching. "If a quarterback throws five interceptions in a game, it may be, one, that he doesn't understand what we're doing, or, two, we may be a poor judge of talent."

By sheer numbers, football calls for more organization than any other sport. Good assistants—for the hugely important recruiting chores as well as teaching and coaching once players are on the team—are essential. There is offense to worry about. Defense. Punting. Kicking. Returning. There are scout squads that need to play hard and to give the top units an idea of exactly what they will face on Saturday. There are off-season weight programs and spring football.

McDonnell, 43, stresses accountability for each of the nearly 100 players in the program. "What can they do better?" he says. "They better be able to say everything they do is the right thing. They're accountable for how they prepare. For how hard they practice. For working in the weight room. For concentrating in key situations."

Bowes was long the heavy in the UNH football program, commanding respect. When "the Big Guy" talked, players and coaches listened. Bowes was the dealer of discipline. That was the way it had to be, says Bowes. Players could dislike him if they wanted, but it wouldn't do if they didn't get along with their assistant coach, with whom they spent most of their time. It was UNH football's own good cop, bad cop routine.

"I'm the ogre, if you want to call it that," Bowes says. "I'm the bad guy. I've gotten letters from kids I've kicked off the team, thanking me and saying that it's probably the best thing that ever happened to them. They never thought it would happen, and it made a difference in their lives."

Which is why he, and many coaches, got into the business in the first place. A native of Pennsylvania, Bowes was a tight end at Penn State. After a coaching stint at UNH from 1966-68, and four seasons at Boston College, he returned to UNH as head coach in 1972.

"You have to have a burning desire to be a coach, and part of that is you have to be someone who feels they can make a difference, perhaps, in the lives of kids," Bowes said. "In some cases remold, or restructure their lives. We get kids, not all of them, but a lot who have been stars in high school, and they come in somewhat arrogant and big-headed. They think they have all the answers." Most quickly find out on the practice field that they don't. They get knocked down. They need to be built up again.

"I think the thing I'm going to miss the most is the day-to-day interaction with the kids," Bowes said. "I got a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of watching them mature and grow during their college careers."

Tapes and trophies fill the office of Jim Boulanger '75. Cut glass trophies for the four straight America East outdoor track titles, three indoor titles and a cross-country championship that Boulanger's teams have won.

And tapes. Lots of videotapes, part of the tools of Boulanger's trade. Tapes to study, to help in teaching.

Boulanger, who loves to golf and spend time with his family on Milton Three Ponds, works the track like a politician works a crowd. He huddles with hurdlers, jokes with javelin throwers, verbally jousts with a pack of women runners each time they pass by.

As director of cross-country and track and field, Boulanger oversees both the men's and women's teams. "I feel so at home when I'm on the field teaching and coaching," he says. "After a while it seems so natural. You just get on a roll, and the kids listen and you throw in the odd joke or two—politically correct, of course. It's a different classroom for me and it's my style. I feel unbelievably comfortable out there. I talk about what they have to do. It's probably no different than any other manager of any other business. I know my product and I feel great with it."

It wasn't always so. Boulanger, 45, knew from age 15 that he wanted to coach, but he figured he would coach one of the sports he played: football, basketball or baseball. "Being this round guy I am, I always figured myself to be coaching offensive linemen."

He was a junior at UNH and no longer playing football when he decided he better improve his resume. He went to Oyster River High School in Durham to apply for a job as an assistant winter track coach. Told he didn't have enough experience, he went back in the spring when he saw the spot was still empty. Perseverance triumphed over resume.

Soon, he fell in love with cross-country, and with coaching cross-country and track athletes. He took over the program and began winning meets and titles. After assisting at UNH, he replaced John Copeland in 1982.

For years, Boulanger, a regular at many UNH sporting events, has done a lot with a little, in terms of facilities and scholarship money and other resources. He still waits for a new UNH track so the team can have home meets. But the goals remain the same.

"To keep winning the conference," Boulanger says. "To keep getting better. To always be a team. I know there will be times we have holes. But my puzzle keeps getting completed by those who walk through the door and get better."

Jeff Biron '99 wasn't sure he wanted to run anymore. He had been a very successful runner at Manchester Memorial High School, but always loved soccer more. He sat out his first track season at UNH. Then he came out to run for Boulanger.

"I had injuries and setbacks, and he never let me beat myself up about it," Biron says. "He makes sure you stay positive."

Biron cites Boulanger's knowledge and ability to get the most out of his athletes. Biron never ran with the knees-high style most sprinters use and coaches often insist is the best, sometimes only way to run.

"He's able to see the fundamentals and mechanics you have and he doesn't try to change everyone to fit one mold," Biron says. "He uses those tapes and he's definitely a student of the sport as well as a teacher." Biron was captain last winter and spring and ran on conference championship relay teams. UNH won team titles in six of his seven seasons in the program.

"I love to win as much as the next guy," Boulanger says. "But I really think it's very important also to know you can tell the kids that a loss is in the past. Start clean the next day and let's go on. I don't want anyone else dwelling on a statement like, 'This loss will follow you the rest of your lives,' that was said to me in high school. That didn't sit well with me at all. I thought, 'This is a game,' even then."

Dick Umile '72 didn't know for sure that late spring day, but he had a feeling he might be losing Jayme Filipowicz. Thinking about Filipowicz leaving was sobering—and sure enough, a few days later, the defenseman announced he was skipping his senior year of college to turn professional—but a few minutes later Umile smiled when highly regarded freshman Kevin Truelson, up for orientation, stopped by to say hello. Out with the old. In with the new.

Derek Bekar visited earlier in the day—he was back in town working toward his degree after passing up his senior year to go pro last year. Brian Putnam '97, another former player and now a coach, stopped by. Letters had arrived from both Jason Krog '99 and Steve O'Brien '99, leaders of the 1998-99 team, thanking Umile for their experiences as UNH hockey players.

"They come in here as kids, a year or two out of high school and you see them grow and develop," Umile says. "This is what coaching's all about. Those letters were very emotional. It's what keeps you going. You're not going to go to the Final Four every year. You're not always going to play in the championship game. But you're always going to get the letters."

Of course, the way UNH has played the last couple of years, fans may be hoping the Wildcats are going to the Final Four every year. Umile and his coaching staff have raised the bar. Never before had UNH made the Final Four two years in a row. Never before had UNH played in the national championship game, a game it lost in overtime to Maine last April.

Still fiery, passionate and intense—especially in his pregame speeches—Umile played for UNH and then came back to coach under Bob Kullen. He has calmed down some, but not a lot, since suffering a heart attack after a game two and a half years ago.

"He's learned that if the edge is off, it's OK," says UNH assistant coach Brian McCloskey. "He doesn't feel like he needs to drive the kids emotionally. He lets the kids provide the emotion. The kids have picked up on it. If you're unsettled on the bench, your kids will become unsettled."

Umile, 50, feels he has eased up some with experience. Coaching any team, he says, comes down to the same thing: communicating.

"We did a clinic and we each talked about an aspect of the game," Umile says. "The point I tried to get across was that 15 years ago, I was where they are—the coach of a high school team—and it's not much different. It's experience and playing against a higher level of competition, but the foundation is the same. The game is pretty simple. It's how you communicate. It's discipline and listening and all those things you're doing."

He rattles off the names of teacher/coaches he admired and who molded him at Melrose High.

"It's like any other job, you get better with experience," Umile says. "You learn to listen more. You have to be clear. Everyone has to understand what you're talking about. There are different ways to do that, whether it's through repetition or diagrams or videos. You have to make sure you're clear and being heard. That's communication."

Mike Souza '00, the Wildcats' new captain, says Umile "does a good job of picking his spots. Whether it's individually, going one-on-one with someone or constructive criticism for the whole team. To be a good coach I think you have to pick your spots. Our coaching staff does a good job with that, and it obviously comes from him."

Umile has never had any trouble getting across how he feels about UNH.

"The guy bleeds blue and white," says Souza. "It's amazing. Sometimes he gets so into it in the pre-game talk that it's funny. But it's great. It's something you kind of want everyone to see once."

Allen Lessels '76, a sportswriter for The Boston Globe, lives in Contoocook, N.H.

Legends of the Past

Paul Sweet and Charlie Holt worked opposite sides of the street in Durham during their tenures at UNH—Sweet at the Field House and Holt at Snively Arena. But today, they are linked as legends of UNH coaching.

Sweet was in charge of track from 1924 to 1970—for 46 years. He turned 98 in March, lives in upstate New York, and until very recently made frequent trips to Durham. Holt, 77, who headed up men's ice hockey from 1968-1986, is a Durham resident and a regular at Wildcat hockey games. Both presided over highly successful Wildcat teams, and between them they coached hundreds of UNH athletes. And both, like others through the years, left rich coaching legacies.

Ralph Stevens '53, a runner, keeps in touch with Sweet today. "He was hands-on and individualistic and democratic," says Stevens. "He was as happy to spend time with the new guy who was learning technique as he was with the No. 1 competitor. One thing that made him so beloved was his attitude. He was upbeat and always optimistic. He encouraged you to do your best and to do a little better, not necessarily to win, but to do your best. And he was fun to be with. He had a good sense of humor.''

It's an attitude he has maintained through the years. In a recent letter to Stevens, Sweet wrote: "It's like the old song—'Ain't got much future, but oh, what a past.'''

UNH hockey coach Dick Umile '72 played for Holt after being recruited by Rube Bjorkman. "Charlie knew how to play the game, and he really taught you how to play the game, all three zones," Umile says. "It was maybe complicated at the beginning, but he stuck with it and taught you how to do it."

Holt credits assistants like Bob Norton, Dave O'Connor and Bob Kullen with getting him players and helping him coach them. And he credits the players. "What I desperately wanted to do was find the best way to use an individual, to find a spot that would make him the most profitable," Holt said. "Where to put him to give him success, and that generally would give us success. When we asked someone to do something, we tried very hard to ask of those guys that which they could do best."

Holt remains excited about UNH hockey. "It's going to be fun," he said. "How about (sophomore) Darren Haydar? It's almost unbelievable a guy that young is doing so well. We have had crackerjack players."

—A.L.

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