While she’d love to be playing, Ms. DeStefano says she enjoys coaching just as much.
Described by students and players as vibrant, passionate, exuberant, and quirky, Ms. Courtney DeStefano is among the most popular and beloved coaches and teachers on campus. As well as teaching in the HPRSS Department and being the Co-Head of the Prefect Program, Destefs, as she is known by many, is the head coach of both girls’ varsity lacrosse and Girls’ JV Field Hockey.
While Ms. DeStefano does a lot off the field, her true passion is lacrosse. She said, “I have loved lacrosse ever since fifth grade, and when I played on the field for 45 minutes, somebody was like, ‘Do you want to try goalie?’ and I was like ‘Yeah!’” That love for the game has driven Ms. DeStefano throughout high school, where she played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse all four years. This passion continued to college, where she played lacrosse at Skidmore.
For Ms. DeStefano, a successful playing career has evolved into coaching. In her first two years at Choate, Ms. DeStefano was an assistant coach for the Girls’ Varsity Lacrosse team. Last year, she moved to the head coaching position. She also coaches a club team outside of Choate. Ms. DeStefano spoke about her favorite part of coaching, said, “About lacrosse, specifically, I love how fast-paced the game is, and how, even though there are a lot of restrictions, it’s a pretty aggressive game, and it requires a lot of critical thinking in terms of making plays work and thinking about having control over your body and what you’re doing in order to be effective. And I love when the team comes together and the camaraderie that develops as well and all the crazy little habits and year-to-year things that we do that make the team really special.” She also stated, “It is just really fun to be outside every day in the afternoon and for two hours, not worrying about anything else but playing lacrosse. Sometimes it’s hard because I want to jump in and I want to play, but it’s just really fun.”
Ms. DeStefano also cited the ability to coach as one of her favorite parts about working at Choate. She said, “For lacrosse, I really love teaching and coaching at the varsity level. I feel like I have a lot of expertise to bring to the position having played and coached for a long time. It’s really fun to try to share some of the things I know with my players. I think that being able to go past some of the more rudimentary stuff and get right into the more complicated and more difficult parts of the game is really appealing.”
Students are quick to sing the praises of their coach, with Julia MacKenzie ’19 commented, “She has a really strong presence on and off the field and the team feeds off of her energy really well. Everyone on campus knows her as a vibrant and dynamic individual and she brings that energy to the field every day.” MacKenzie also mentioned that Coach DeStefano was a strong motivator who sought nothing less than the best out of all of her players.
While lacrosse has been a lifelong love of Ms. DeStefano, she is also very knowledgeable about field hockey, a sport she has been coaching at Choate for her four years at the school. Regarding her coaching, she said, “I like coaching JV for field hockey because I think it’s a very technical sport, and I enjoy doing that technical side of things. It’s nice in the fall to have not as much pressure because the fall is just a very high pressure situation in general, getting back into the swing of things at school.”
While coaching has allowed her to stay connected to her favorite sports, Ms. DeStefano realizes that coaching is certainly a significant time commitment. She said that while she has never calculated the exact amount of time coaching takes up, it is undoubtedly a large part of her day, and has been a massive part of her life here at Choate. This doesn’t go unnoticed among her athletes, as her dedication motivates them to work just as hard.
