The Field Commander

Pass by New Balance Field on a Saturday afternoon in fall and you’re likely to glimpse a short woman with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair moving animatedly up and down the field. For the last 35 years Sally Starr has been patrolling the sidelines as head coach of the BU field hockey team, shouting words of encouragement, exhorting her players to “play together, be smart, be tenacious, and attack the game.”

Starr arrived at BU after an illustrious playing career at her undergrad school, Ursinus College, followed by short coaching stints at the University of New Hampshire, where she earned a master’s, and at Bucknell University. Over three and a half decades, she has transformed the BU program from a fledgling varsity sport into a national powerhouse. (This year’s team is currently ranked 17th in the nation.)

“The field hockey program, when I first started, was pretty much a new program,” says Starr. “I think I was the first full-time coach, and actually, at the time I was hired to coach both field hockey and lacrosse. There were no scholarships at that point in time, and we pretty much lost to everybody.  I don’t even remember what our first record was, but it was not that good.”

Sally Starr early in her career as head coach of BU’s field hockey team. When she first arrived at BU she was head coach of both field hockey and women’s lacrosse. Photo by BU Athletics

In the intervening decades, Starr has amassed an impressive 408-261-19 record, 11 NCAA tournament appearances, with a trip to the NCAA final four in 1985 and the quarter-final round in 1991, 9 conference tournament championships, and 12 conference regular-season titles. Over the past 30 years, the team has been ranked 22 times in the top 20 and finished in the top 10 half a dozen times.

Along the way, Starr has earned her share of accolades. Last year she was inducted into the National Field Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame. And with over 400 wins to her credit, she is 11th in all-time career wins among college field hockey coaches.

“My passion for the game is really just as fresh now as it was when I started playing as an eighth-grader,” says Starr who still gets butterflies before each game.

For a dozen years after Nickerson Field was torn up in 2001, the team led a nomadic existence. Players traveled by van each season from Babson and Bentley to MIT, Harvard, and BC. It wasn’t an easy time, Starr says.

“I stayed here for 35 years, and I stayed here for a reason,” she says, “even during the 12 years that we didn’t have a field on campus. That could have been a time when I easily could have said, ‘OK, this program isn’t getting the support it needs and I’m going elsewhere.’ But I didn’t do that, and I didn’t do that because I love Boston University.”

“I stayed here for 35 years, and I stayed here for a reason,” says Starr.

“Every home game was really an away game,” recalls associate head coach Sarah Shute (SHA’08), who played for Starr from 2004 to 2007.

“How she handled that was really incredible,” says Tracey Paul, field hockey assistant coach. “She put a positive spin on it with the team, bought everybody a copy of Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, and got the team situated emotionally about it. Then she went out and found fields for us to play on.”

All that changed when New Balance Field was completed in September 2013. For the first time in more than a decade, the Terriers had a home of their own. The $27 million state-of-the-art facility gave the team a leg up. “The field impacts our ability to play better and recruit top players,” Starr told BU Today at the time.

“It’s like a dream come true,” Shute says. “Sometimes Sally and I will walk back down Babcock Street from lunch at T Anthony’s and look over at the field and just say, ‘I can’t believe that this is here.’ It’s been instrumental in our success, and we’re so blessed and fortunate to have this amazing facility on campus.”

Over the years, Starr’s coaching style has changed, as she readily acknowledges.

“I think my alumni would say I’ve probably mellowed out a little bit. They used to keep a little pack of Starbursts—you know, the candy—in the training kit, and if I was starting to have a Starr-burst on the sideline, with my last name being Starr, or I’d be having a Starr-burst at them, or a Starr-burst at the officials, they’d hand me a little piece of candy and try to get me to calm down a little bit.”

“I would describe Sally’s coaching style as compassionate intensity,” says Paul. “I think she really wants her athletes to find out how good they can become, and at the same time she is very understanding of them being student-athletes.”

Starr’s current athletes echo that opinion, maintaining that while Starr knows that success on the field is important, she also understands there’s more to life and the college experience than just field hockey.

“She’s very understanding, and she’s not a coach who cares just about winning, but genuinely cares about her players and what’s going on with us and our lives,” says forward and cocaptain Sofi Laurito (COM’16).

Other players point to Starr’s enthusiasm and her ability to instill in them a love for the game. “She wants us to be out here having fun and enjoying it as much as she does,” says defender Rachel Coll (Questrom’16), the other cocaptain.

Tenacious, loyal, love to play and will play all day long

Starr makes a point of staying in touch with her players after they’ve graduated. Many of them regularly come out to support the field hockey program and a number have emulated Starr and become coaches themselves.

“I go to the games and I’m actually coaching in Sharon, Mass.,” says former standout Vicky Caburian (SAR’91, SED’92). “I think a lot of the field hockey alums are coaching, which is a testament to Sally. She gave us the experience and the knowledge and also the ability to know that we could inspire kids as she did us.”

Many former team members refer to what they call “BUFHA,” which Starr says has become something of an umbrella term. “It’s all about the family,” she says. “It’s Boston University Field Hockey Athlete, or Alumni, or Association—there’s lots of different acronyms for BUFHA.”

“My proudest accomplishment, quite honestly, is when I get on Facebook and I see one of our former players at a wedding where there’s a lot of athletes, a lot of BUFHA teammates, or when I attend a wedding, or when I see baby pictures,” Starr says. “When we have an alumni weekend, an alumni event, there’s kids from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000, 2010, and they all mesh together and that common thread, again, is BUFHA.”

Starr loves the fact that the team mascot is a Boston terrier. It’s an apt metaphor, she says, for her approach to the game and to coaching. “Terriers have tenaciousness, they’re loyal, they love to play, they will play all day long, they’ll run after the ball all day long. I talk to my girls about having their tails up. When we play and we’re playing well, our tails are up and we’re on a hunt and we’re going after it. There’s intelligence, there’s love, and there’s a fearlessness. They don’t back down to the big dogs.”

“She’s obsessed with terriers,” says Coll with a laugh, noting that her coach has two Boston terriers herself, Archie and Pip. “She loves her dogs like they’re children.”

“I think she might like Archie and Pip more than coaching,” Laurito says. “Sally’s favorite thing to say is, ‘Tails up and wagging.’ That’s how we’re supposed to be playing and practicing. We don’t talk on the field—we bark.”

“The actual fact is that Sally’s the terrier herself,” says Paul. “I like to think of her as a little dog with a big bite. She’s really intense and the most important thing is she loves to play. She’s got a great balance.”

Looking ahead, the 35-year coach doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon, but when she does, she says, she’ll continue to be a presence on the sidelines at New Balance Field.

“Field hockey will always be part of my life,” says Starr. “I’ll definitely continue to watch Boston University games. I love watching high-level international hockey, so I’ll probably travel the world to continue to see some great hockey.”

Members of the 1985 BU field hockey team will commemorate the 30th anniversary of their NCAA tournament final four appearance this Saturday, October 3, when the Terriers host American University at noon at New Balance Field, 286 Babcock St. All games are free and open to the public.

Zach Waller can be reached at zjw5@bu.edu.

Jay Colamaria can be reached at jcola@bu.edu.