From Father to Coach: The Dynamic Between Varsity Lacrosse Player and Her Coach

After coaching his daughter, senior Kiki Ehrich, for 10 years, girls lacrosse head coach Dennis Ehrich believes she embodies the team slogan — WeB4Me — as a player.

Through spending time together on the lacrosse field during four 2-hour practices a week and multiple games, Dennis has watched Kiki support her team from the sidelines and on the field, all while taking on a leadership role. Dennis began as her coach when Kiki was in third grade on the Prairie Village Outlaws and has followed her all the way up to East’s varsity team.

“She [is a leader] verbally, she’s very supportive on the side-lines,” Dennis said. “A senior wasn’t going to come back but [Kiki] and a few other players encouraged her to and now she’s playing. She also tries to break down cliques, that used to be a problem but there aren’t a lot of cliques any more. It’s ‘no I in team,’ ‘WeB4Me,’ I think she really believes that stuff.”

As a player, Dennis believes Kiki’s field awareness, such as knowing how to move around a defender and where to shoot, gas grown immensely through field time over the last 10 years.

“She knows where she should be when she has the ball, where she should be when she doesn’t,” Dennis said. “That field awareness is something that’s mostly learned through field time and experience, a little bit of coaching but also just field time and not many people on Prairie Village understand that.”

Dennis believes the coaching position has helped him become more compassionate. In addition to staying at the practice field well past the end of practice at 8:30 p.m. to make sure every girl gets picked up, he has learned to be more thoughtful in his feedback and interact with players based on their own skills and confidence. This deliberation partially sprouted from having to adjust his tone when giving feedback to accomodate for the fact that he was coaching his daughter.

As Dennis has seen it is difficult for Kiki to hear feedback from him, being her dad, he often allows assistant varsity coach Kevin Krause to give her tips on the field.

“I rely on the [assistant varsity coach] to help coach Kiki because you don’t criticize or overcoach your own daughter,” Dennis said. “I have to be very careful with my tone and make sure she doesn’t take it super personally because I’m an intense coach.”

Kiki also agrees that there can be tension between the two on the field, especially when she gets a yellow card that could’ve been avoided.

“If he knows I could have done something to avoid [getting a call] there is going to be a screaming match and I have a temper especially on the field,” Kiki said. “But it’s not really caused by my dad being the coach because Kevin and I kind of do the same thing.”

As much as the father-daughter coaching dynamic can create tension, they both try to keep the topic of lacrosse out of the house to avoid arguments. Kiki is also cautious to not take advantage of her dad being the coach. She avoids telling him what drills to practice, complaining about running and always calls him ‘coach’ instead of ‘dad.’

Aside from the obstacles they face of adjusting tone to give feedback and not bringing up bad plays in the house, Dennis and Kiki both agree that the time they spend together on the field as well as driving together to practices and games has made them closer.

“It’s actually probably made us closer because he’s a really busy guy and especially in spring season I’ll pretty much only see him at lacrosse practice of games,” Kiki said. “It changes the dynamic for me too because with any other coach I would be more intimidated by them but since it’s my dad I still respect him but I can mess around with him and have more fun.”

As for the future, Kiki has not yet committed to a college, but foresees playing club lacrosse. She believes it will take some time to get used to not seeing her dad on the sidelines, but is intrigued by the different play calls and drills a different coach will bring to the game.

“It’s fun to have him [at lacrosse] because I think he’s a great coach and a fun guy and knows what he’s doing but at the same time I think it would be kind of interesting to do something different and see a new coaching style,” Kiki said.