Kaela Tierney
Last year Kristen Coleman came out of nowhere: A freshman, leading the MAAC in scoring, an unlikely star on a veteran Stags team.
But this year, there is no excuse for opponents to forget about Coleman, especially after the way many teams were burned by her last season.
Her head coach, Mike Waldvogel, has said that Coleman has become even more important this year, as teams now focus on her and draw openings for teammates. Even that has not slowed Coleman’s success, as again she is the team’s leader in both goals and points (23 goals, 29 points in seven games).
Fairfield, like last year, is off to a fast start, with a 6-2′ record and a losses only Yale and No. 17 Dartmouth.
Meanwhile, senior teammate Rebecca White has benefited greatly from the added pressure that Coleman puts on opponents. White already has 24 goals and is on pace to blow by her career-high 29 goals that she scored a year ago.
As for Coleman, she has earned the MAAC Player of the Week award just once this season, which is normally a great accomplishment, but appears meager compared to the 10 awards she earned in her rookie year.
Coleman arrived at Fairfield after a highly successful career at Holy Cross High School in Potomac, Md. She scored 85 goals and recorded 40 assists in her final year at Holy Cross, earning a 2007 U.S. Lacrosse High School All-American honorable mention nod and multiple regional awards.
Success has followed Coleman since she began in high school, following up an 18-2 season in her senior year at Holy Cross, with another 18-2 season, this time at the college level in Fairfield.
Coleman scored 68 goals and recorded 22 assists for the Stags, resulting in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Player and Rookie of the Year honors.’ Her 4.74 goals per game is the sixth highest total in MAAC history and was the eighth-highest total in the nation. Her 90 points was seventh highest in the NCAA.
Coleman has quickly risen through the Fairfield record books, setting single-season goal and assist records last year. She already ranks sixth in program history in goals with 91 in her career and holds the seventh all-time record with 119 career points.
But a truly successful season for Coleman will only come if the Stags make a trip to the NCAA tournament, which would be their first in program history. That will come only with a victory in the MAAC tournament, a goal the team set to begin this season and hopes to reach after last year’s devastating loss to Marist in the championship.
The Stags start their MAAC season with two games on the road, and then return home on April 3 for a matchup with Marist, possibly the most important game of the regular season for the Stags.
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