Calling to coach; Alumna finds her passion at Susquehanna University

     To be a head coach of a championship-winning college team, sounds like a position that requires years of commitment. Allison Fordyce has quite the resume of experience and the titles to prove it, but she admits coaching was not always what she thought she was going to do. 

     After graduating from North Harford High School, her grand plans for going away for college came to a halt. Her parents won the opportunity to teach in Hungary for a year, so Fordyce stayed local and went to Harford Community College. There she played field hockey for two seasons and won a National Championship.

     Two years later, she transferred to Towson University and then to graduate school at McDaniel College where Fordyce admits, “I was going for a masters in education thinking, ‘oh maybe I’ll be a teacher’, but kind of deep down know I didn’t really want to be a teacher.”

     Out of the blue, one day, an opportunity arose for her to coach field hockey and lacrosse at Harford Community College. She says, “looking back [it was] completely absurd because I was twenty-two years old and I had no idea what I was doing.” Someone had randomly suggested that she apply for the athletic director job.“I ended up getting the job and it was an awesome experience. I think it really shaped me, just because at a really young age I was forced to make some pretty tough decisions and be in positions that were completely outside of my comfort zone,” she reveals. Fordyce coached and worked at Harford Community for five years.

     Her coaching journey continued at College of Notre Dame for one season. Next at York College for a few years where she started the first NCAA Women’s Lacrosse team for the school.

     Fordyce later had to leave York, because her husband took a job coaching football at Susquehanna University. Resorting back to teaching she says, “I was still teaching preschool, purely to have a job, but it wasn’t for me.” At a crossroad in her life, she was trying to figure out what to do next. “I went through all these, what am I doing, what am I going to do with my life, kind of thoughts,” she confesses.

     “Coaching somehow kept coming back to me or I just couldn’t leave,” Fordyce claims.

     Another opportunity soon presented itself, where she became the assistant coach for field hockey and lacrosse at Susquehanna University for four years. She confirms,“in hindsight it was one of the best experiences I ever had. I had the opportunity to work with four different coaches during my time [there], all with different coaching styles and experience.” 

      Fordyce stepped up, and is now in her fourth year as Head Field Hockey Coach, eighth year overall at Susquehanna University. She is also the Senior Women’s Administrator for the school.

     She emphasizes to her players all the time, “Even when you don’t think so, it’s going to be okay and it’s going to work out. You don’t know how but it will.” Even in the times of uncertainty for Fordyce, what she was meant to do, found her. “There’s nothing I’d rather do. It’s been a great experience, lots of ups and downs but I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” she expresses.

     Regarding North Harford, Fordyce admits,“Looking back I don’t know if I appreciated it then but I think that I really was impacted by the small community feel; which is very much what I found at Susquehanna.” She attributes North Harford for showing that you can feel comfortable in whatever you choose to do, and that for her was coaching. At North Harford, “you could be whoever you wanted to be. It was a comfortable environment.”