Photos courtesy of Dave Ferguson
Few high school sports teams in Ohio, boys’ or girls’, have enjoyed the kind of success the New Albany High School girls’ lacrosse team has had in the past five years.
It’s been an impressive run. The team reached the semifinals in 2011 and the finals in 2012 and won the state championship in 2013. At the heart of this success is Coach Dave Ferguson, a New Albany resident intent on building these accomplishments the right way: through commitment, balance and an emerging sense of tradition.
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Ferguson first came to lacrosse while playing football for Ashland University, when his football coach asked him to play. His coaching began when his children started playing lacrosse, something he and his wife, Kristin, support wholeheartedly.
“My wife and I are big advocates of athletics. We believe it’s a great balance for anybody in school. We just think it’s important for any kid to participate on a team sport for their own development,” Ferguson says.
All four of the Ferguson family’s children—23-year-old Murphy, 21-year-old Mac, 19-year-old Wesley and 14-year-old Blythe—have participated in sports while attending New Albany-Plain Local Schools.
Ferguson’s background and commitment to lacrosse go beyond playing and coaching. He has served as president of the youth-focused New Albany Lacrosse Association (NALA), president and board member of the Ohio Schoolgirls Lacrosse Coaches Association (OSLCA), vice president of the OSLCA Central Region and member of the All-American Selection Committee. First and foremost, though, he is Coach Ferguson.
When New Albany High School asked him to become an assistant coach for the girls’ team in 2007, Ferguson knew it would be a good opportunity because of the success the middle school and youth leagues were having. His oldest daughter, Murphy, was a freshman at New Albany at the time and was a bit more apprehensive because she’d seen how her dad coached boys.
“She told me that girls are different, and so I needed to focus on some of the differences of girls, which is true,” Ferguson says.
Nine years later, his daughter’s sage advice has served Ferguson well.
“I really love coaching the girls. I get a lot of fun out of it. I find that they are very passionate about the sport,” he says.
The girls’ passion, and Ferguson’s, requires significant amounts of time and energy. Ferguson knows this means it’s necessary to seek the right balance between school and sports.
“We’re not their parents, we’re not their teachers, but we as coaches have got to be consistent in recognizing that they’re students first, athletes second,” he says.
One way Ferguson differentiates himself in this regard is by always giving his players spring break off, telling them “go recharge your batteries, go with your family for spring break, then come back and be ready to play for the season.”
He also encourages his players to participate in sports other than lacrosse, which, in an increasingly specialized high school sports scene, is nearly unheard of today. Luckily for Ferguson, and New Albany High School, the coaches here are like-minded in this regard.
Despite the multi-sport leniency, the girls’ lacrosse team is extremely competitive, and Ferguson spends quite a bit of time finding ways to keep the girls motivated without burning them out and engaged without disrupting the school-sports balance.
Taking a cue from the great “Carpe Diem” scene at the beginning of the movie Dead Poets Society, he tries to get his players to look at some of the pictures and accomplishments in the trophy case at the high school, asking the girls, “Do you want to be there? Do you want to have your team picture there?”
He hopes, of course, that the answer is a resounding “yes,” but not simply for the lacrosse success it might bear. Part of his mission is to build a legacy, a tradition that these girls want to be a part of in high school and beyond.
Ferguson cites Upper Arlington as a model.
“What we see in other communities, like Upper Arlington, is we see a lot of those kids who grew up in Upper Arlington, they want to move back, and they want to raise families in Upper Arlington. If you look at their graduation, they have fourth generation, third generation. I’m looking forward to seeing in the future kids who were in our program come back, they raise their family here in New Albany and then they want to be part of that,” he says.
For him, the fruits of these efforts are Ferguson’s reward. He specifically enjoys watching his players grow.
“We’ve had a lot of athletes come into the program who’ve never played lacrosse, and watching them develop their skills and becoming a starter and an impact player, I get great joy out of watching that happen,” Ferguson says.
Ferguson has also found New Albany to be a great community in which to live.
“It has a great balance of health, arts, schools, and anybody who wants to get involved in the community can, too. People give incredible amounts of time to our community and bettering it,” he says.
New Albany residents may also know Ferguson because of his role on the Plain Township Board of Trustees. His wife is a board member and director of marketing and operations for Healthy New Albany.
Bob Valasek is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.
