Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Hires Emilia Ward As Assistant Coach

Marquette women’s lacrosse made a coaching change that got wrapped up this week, with Emilia Ward officially being announced as the program’s new assistant coach. She replaces MU icon Elizabeth Goslee on head coach Meredith Black’s staff.

Here’s what Black had to say about Ward in the official press release:

”I am so excited for the addition of Emilia to our program,” Black said. “She brings a ton of coaching experience from various different schools and levels of the game. She will be able to help our team to new heights with some fresh ideas and unique ways of doing things. She’s extremely passionate about the game and can jump right into this program with a wealth of knowledge. We are excited to welcome her into the Marquette Lacrosse family.”

This is Ward’s first time coaching at the Division 1 level since she was an assistant at Winthrop for the 2012 season. From there, she has spent the last seven seasons creating lacrosse teams from scratch. Ward was the first ever head coach at Division 2 Alderson Broaddus, which led her to become the first ever head coach at Division 3 Kalamazoo College. After that, she headed back to D2 to launch the Northern Michigan program, which is where she was up through this past season. That’s an impressive amount of dedication as well as an impressive amount of interest in starting from the ground floor over and over again in a seven year stretch.

While Black is clearly not starting a program from nothing heading into year #8, it will be an interesting transition year for the Golden Eagles. Marquette loses their top three scorers, all of whom finished their collegiate careers as one of the program’s top eight scorers. The trio of Grace Gabriel, Cate Soccodato, and Charlotte McGuire have been doing a major amount of the heavy lifting for the Golden Eagles for the past four years, so it will be interesting to see where MU goes from here.

Marquette wrapped up the 2019 regular season with the program’s first ever win over a ranked foe, but the Golden Eagles are still looking for their first ever postseason victory as well as their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. Black hasn’t been shy about playing the best teams that she can get on the schedule, so we’ll see if the addition of Ward and her level of determination and dedication to the coaching staff gives the Golden Eagles a boost in wins when 2020 rolls around.