Jan. 31, 2023 — An uncommon transfer that labored

The primary time I met Lori Jung was an auspicious event: the ultimate of the 1990 Mercer County Event.

The sport turned out to be probably the greatest I might ever witness as the 2 groups — The Hun College of Princeton (N.J.) and Princeton Junction West Windsor-Plainsboro (N.J.) — battled to a 1-1 tie after additional time. Co-champions have been declared on that day, and it was Jung’s West Windsor-Plainsboro workforce’s first main trophy. The workforce, taking part in nicely with a various group of scholars from the WW-P college district, fell brief in state event play to eventual champions like Medford Lakes Shawnee (N.J.) and Flemington Hunterdon Central (N.J.).

In 2000, the coach, now Lori Hussong, made an uncommon transfer: from a high-school program to an NCAA Division I girls’s collegiate program.

For 23 seasons, Hussong coached Rider College, a small trainer’s school in Lawrence, N.J. which is surrounded by discipline hockey royalty. Up Route 206 just a few miles sits Princeton College, which has received one nationwide championship and has been shut on three different events. Go southwest alongside Eggert Crossing Highway, and you discover The School of New Jersey, which has received 11 nationwide championships — together with two with Hussong on the sector as an undergraduate.

Regardless of this surroundings, Rider strove for one of the best with Hussong on the helm. The Broncs would win their method into the NCAA Event Northeast Convention and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Convention post-season championship. Extra spectacular, nevertheless was the truth that Rider can be the regular-season champion ten instances — a feat that requires a sustained effort over a number of months somewhat than simply being the workforce that might discover kind for a four- or five-day interval in November.

And if you need extra proof of sustained effort, Rider would make the convention event each single yr of her collegiate teaching profession.

I acquired to know Lori Hussong fairly nicely when she was a high-school coach. She demanded and acquired one of the best from her gamers at WW-P, and she or he coached Rider the identical method: with a love for the sport and together with her coronary heart on her sleeve.

On the similar time, she was an advocate for the game. She demanded, and acquired, a turf pitch on the Rider campus after years of taking part in on the grass infield of the varsity’s outside monitor stadium.

It seems as if this can be a new period of girls’s athletics at Rider, with a brand new girls’s lacrosse workforce coming into kind a yr from now. And I’ll have an interest to see who will take over this place.