“That has been a hallmark of her coaching style—not so much drilling as teaching the game, letting her players think for themselves,” assistant Coach Sarah [Downing] Nelson ’94 said.

“Teaching players to think for themselves is totally my philosophy,” Kleinfelder agreed. “That’s one of the distressing parts of sports today—the more timeouts you have, the more coaches take control of the game and the less the players play.”

That was not the case for most of her coaching career, and the principle of teaching her team as opposed to micromanaging her players’ every move paid dividends both on Harvard’s immediate success and the individual players’ career trajectories.

“She taught smart players, and she taught them how to be smart players,” said former goaltender Sarah Leary ’92. “She was a believer in teaching the game so players could think on the fly, just one of the reasons why many of her former players ended up as coaches.”

Amidst the number of ex-Harvardians turned coaches is Nelson, Elizabeth [Berkery] Drury ’93—who served as interim head coach while Kleinfelder was on sabbatical in 1998—and Princeton coach Chris Sailer.

“She was my inspiration for getting into coaching,” Sailer said. “Harvard was the program I tried to emulate here at Princeton.”

Sailer has been successful in that goal—her Tigers won the 2002 national championship and took over the mantle that Harvard once wore by dominating the Ancient Eight.

A Changed World

Part of the Crimson’s fall from the pinnacle of the Ivy League in the mid-1990s has to do with the changing world of women’s lacrosse. Kleinfelder helped bring about that change but hasn’t enjoyed the results.

“Coaching has become all-consuming,” said Kleinfelder, noting that when she began, coaching was not a 12-month appointment and allowed her summers off to unwind and see family.

The time commitment is not the only change. As women’s sports have become more popular and more financially viable, they have also become susceptible to the ills that plague men’s college athletics—recruiting violations and promises of admissions.

“I find the recruiting to be very unsavory,” she said. “I don’t like the whole business. You become less of a teacher and more of a salesperson.”

Pioneer in Women’s Sports

There was one time that Kleinfelder willingly assumed the role of salesperson, but it was a decision made to advance the game of women’s lacrosse she said. She was approached by Brine, maker of lacrosse equipment, about designing a women’s plastic stick.

Men’s lacrosse had recently switched from wooden sticks to molded plastic ones, but women’s teams around the country did not yet have a plastic model. That’s where Kleinfelder stepped in, designing the popular Brine Cup stick and helping promote the use of plastic sticks in the women’s game.