William & Mary Athletics

To the vast majority of W&M alumni, family, friends, and the national communities of field hockey and lacrosse, Peel Hawthorne needs no introduction.  She was a key member of some of the Tribe's most successful teams in both sports as an athlete, and after returning to Williamsburg in 1986, forged an unmatched legacy as coach of W&M's field hockey team before moving into administration in 2013.
 
Hawthorne was a pioneer at W&M, enrolling in the fall of 1976 as Tribe womens' teams were taking off as national powers, especially in her chosen sports of field hockey and lacrosse.  She helped W&M qualify for AIAW Championships in both, including fifth-place national finishes in both the spring of 1979 (lacrosse) and that fall (field hockey).  In hockey, her teams went 54-14-9 (.763), including winning 18 games in 1979 that still stands as the program record.  Hawthorne was a defender, helping the team allow less than one goal per game on average, a mark that would have led the NCAA in six of the past nine years.  In lacrosse, her teams went an astonishing 34-6-3 (.826), and in 1979 won the Tribe's first state championship en route to that fifth place finish at the national tournament.
 
After graduating in 1980, Hawthorne spent four years coaching at Connecticut College, before returning to her alma mater as the head field hockey coach in 1987.  Over the next 26 years, she went 275-234-2 (.540), including a 98-76 (.563) mark in conference play, and led W&M to its first two NCAA Tournament appearances in 2000 and 2002.  Hawthorne's team won 10+ games in 18 of her seasons, and after the CAA moved to a qualifying tournament in 2000, the Tribe earned either the first or second seed five times.  That included in 2003, when W&M shared the unofficial regular-season title with national powerhouse Old Dominion, and the following year, 2004, when the Tribe went undefeated in conference play for the first (and, so far, only) time.  W&M was not just competitive in the conference but also nationally, reaching a best ranking of No. 9 in the 2000 season.  Hawthorne was also a highly successful lacrosse coach, leading Connecticut College to a 35-15-1 record as head coach, and in 1988, her first season at W&M, she was the assistant coach as the Tribe won the South Atlantic Conference and hosted Harvard in the NCAA Quarterfinals in an 11-2 year.  The only loss in the regular season was to reigning NCAA Champion Penn State, and W&M reached as high as No. 2 in the national polls that year.
 
At the time of her retirement from coaching ahead of the 2013 season, Hawthorne had collected a 30-year total record of 306-251-6 (.549), and was the 13th coach in NCAA Division I history to reach 300 wins.  Her 563 total games coached ranked 10th in NCAA history, and her 275 wins at W&M were more than three-times as many as the next winningest coach in a program history that stretched all the way back to 1918, when the first women were admitted to W&M.  Her athletes were incredibly successful as well, with seven earning All-American honors, and five earning induction to the W&M Hall of Fame (to date).  Hawthorne was named the CAA Coach of the Year three times, in 1995, 2001, and 2004, as well as the State Coach of the Year in 2004.  In the summer of 2001, the W&M Alumni Association voted her as the Coach of the Year for the 2000-01 school year.  Hawthorne was elected to her high school Hall of Fame in 2012, and in 2011, at the NCAA Women Coaches Academy, she was voted as the winner of the Judy Sweet Award in recognition of her ability to "demonstrate a spirit and willingness to share; lives with integrity and perspective for her own and other's personal and professional success; and has made an impact on fellow class members."