BY CONNOR BORTZ
The senior girls weren’t the only people departing from the girls lacrosse team following last year’s season, head coach Kevin Ferry left his post as well.
Sarah DeMaio was announced as the replacement for the long-time girls lacrosse coach just moments after Mr. Ferry told the team of his plans to retire.
“No one really knew Ferry was stepping down until we all had a meeting and he announced it,” says Maddie Arends, a junior lacrosse player who Ferry has coached for three yearsl. “We knew there would be a new coach this year, but we thought she would just be an assistant.”
The expectation for the whole team was that Ferry would be returning as the head coach, and that a new assistant coach would be joining his staff. “It was a shock to everyone,” admits Arends. “But it was exciting and new at the same time.”
DeMaio graduated from Lakota West and went on to play four years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She was named the Unsung Hero of the team while also being a key contributor to the team all four years. She then went on to coach lacrosse at her alma mater, Lakota West, for the 2011 and 2012 seasons before coming to Mariemont at the start of this year.
Along with coaching, Sarah DeMaio is also a member of the Cincinnati Queens Women’s Post Collegiate Team and is currently acting as the team’s treasurer. With DeMaio came her sister, Taylor, who also played at Lakota West and currently coaches the girls JV basketball team at Lakota.
New coaches bring new systems and news ideas to a team, but the values Mr. Ferry implemented have not changed according to current players. “She definitely has the same expectations for the team as Ferry did,” says senior Kendall Harden. “She expects good attitudes, hard work, and great results.”
The girls’ expectations of DeMaio were that she would make them work hard, and of course, run a lot. Last summer, she was the coach of the 2015 girls Royals lacrosse club, which is a summer travel team. “The juniors girls who played for her [over the summer] emphasized all the running she would make us do,” adds Harden. “And I think she’s definitely lived up to that.”
All the painstaking work for the girls is leading up to one dream for the entire team: to go as far into the postseason tournament as possible, and hopefully make it back into the Final Four. “She believes in us as a team and wants us to go as deep as possible into the postseason,” comments Arends.
“We hope to go even further this year,” claims Harden. “And she expects us to work like crazy to reach that goal.”
The team opens up the season with a home game Worthington Kilbourne on April 5th. Kilbourne ranked 6th in the state last year, and ended up beating the Lady Warriors with a final score of 12-7.
“Now she has to follow a coach who has built Mariemont’s team for years and years,” suggests Harden. “Somebody who can handle that kind of pressure as well as she does has a lot of guts and deserves a lot of respect.”