Coach Emily Boissonneault up to task of building Pitt women's lacrosse from scratch

Start-ups are nothing new to Emily Boissonneault.

When she entered Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in suburban Toronto as a sophomore, the school was new. She became a member of its first girls basketball team and, at the urging of a gym teacher who owned the local lacrosse club, first girls lacrosse team.

At Detroit Mercy, where she is a member of the university’s athletic hall of fame, she played on the Titans’ inaugural women’s lacrosse team. As an assistant coach at Winthrop, she joined the staff when the women’s lacrosse program was in just its second season.

So perhaps that is why she is unfazed by the task of building Pitt women’s lacrosse from zilch.

“You would probably be able to ask any of the people I have worked with or my (former) players, and they’re not surprised by any of this,” Boissonneault, 28, said. “I think it’s just my personality. I am very determined and love competition. It just kind of made sense to me.”

It made sense to Caroline Sdanowich, a standout defender for James Madison, where Boissonneault was an assistant and associate head coach before coming to Pitt.

“She is so invested in lacrosse and always wants to grow the game,” said Sdanowich, the 2019 Colonial Athletic Association Defensive Player of the Year and member of JMU’s 2018 national championship team. “She’s always all-in in everything she does. She has this personality that you want to be there because you have a good time running and doing all the drills at practice.

“I have absolutely no doubt her first year (at Pitt) is going to be amazing.”

A little more than six months into her tenure at Pitt, Boissonneault is confident she is making good progress. Her hiring was announced June 29, and, she said, the minute she became an official university employee, she started recruiting — even before setting up her office in Fitzgerald Field House.

Boissonneault has signed six players, the beginning of what she hopes will be a roster of between 32 and 40 by the time the team starts practicing in the fall. The Panthers will play their first match in spring 2022.

But building a roster is only a fraction of the process. She added Daniela Eppler as an assistant coach in September and hopes to hire another assistant by late May or early June. When the 2020 season starts, she will be scouting other teams not only to get a look at competition but also coaches who might be candidates for her other assistant’s spot.

She has been spreading the Pitt lacrosse brand by conducting camps around Pittsburgh and in other parts of the state and showing up at as many campus functions as possible. Equipment has begun to trickle in, and the players who have signed already have started picking uniform numbers.

“Every time we do something for the first time, even the second or third time … I mean, our second recruit is our first second recruit,” she said, laughing. “So every (achievement) is something special. Everything we do for the first time is a little victory.

“We got sticks for the first time the other day, and that was a victory.”

On the field, however, victories might be hard to come by for a while. On top of leading a fledgling program, Boissonneault will lead it into the ACC, arguably the strongest women’s lacrosse conference in the nation.

Boissonneault said she is candid with recruits. She tells them to expect failure — at least early on — and the building process will not be for the faint of heart.

“Everyone wants to play Division I. A lot of the athletes I’m recruiting want to play in the ACC,” she said. “The want and the desire are very different than the ability and the drive.

“You have to be able to vet out the players that maybe aren’t going to be able to compete as they need to and be happy. It’s one thing to want it, but are they going to be happy competing for it?”

Oakland Catholic’s Emily Coughlin is one of the players who is taking up that challenge. The Panthers’ first recruit from Pennsylvania, Coughlin understands the potential pitfalls but is confident in Boissonneault’s ability to lead.

“I was just really excited to play at such a high level,” Coughlin said. “She said it will be challenging, but if we work hard it will be really enjoyable. She seems like a great coach, someone who will take this team where it needs to be.”

Boissonneault is winning over players. The bigger task might be winning over the city.

Pittsburgh has had professional indoor lacrosse teams twice: the Bulls of the Major Indoor Lacrosse League (1990-93) and the CrosseFire of the National Lacrosse League (2000). That is a bit of trivia Boissonneault prides herself on knowing.

She also knows those teams didn’t have much of a shelf life. But with the sport’s profile growing in Western Pennsylvania and the Panthers being able to showcase not only their program but, when ACC foes come to visit, the best in the country, Boissonneault sees a golden opportunity to get more people interested.

“The cool thing about lacrosse is it really includes a lot of different sports,” she said. “You will hear a lot of lacrosse coaches compare it to basketball. It’s really similar in terms of movement, in terms of defensive system, offensive system, give-and-gos, pick-and-rolls.

“But you have a stick in your hand like hockey, and then you have the field of soccer. And even track. Track is a huge sport we recruit from.”

In the six months she has been in town, Boissonneault has been to a Pirates game and a Steelers game, eaten at Primanti Bros. — several times — taken frequent trips to Mount Washington and even said “yinz” once or twice. She hopes in a few years Pitt women’s lacrosse similarly will be a Steel City staple.

“It’s a really physical sport … and I think that’s what attracts a lot of people to the sport and one of the reasons I think Pittsburgh will love it,” she said “It’s a rough-and-tumble kind of game, plus it’s fast-paced. I’m hoping it will be able to draw a new market of sports fan.”