‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,’ the old saying goes.
And the saying now rings true on the coaching staff of the Penn women’s lacrosse team, which added resigned Columbia head coach Kerri Whitaker this week.
Whitaker will serve as an assistant under head coach Karin Brower Corbett, completing what amounted to an offseason coaching trade. Penn assistant of the last four years Liz Kittleman left the Quakers in June to take over at the helm of the Lions’ program, which has suffered fourteen straight defeats at the hands of the Red and Blue.
“It’s kind of funny how that worked out,” Whitaker said.
A Ridley Township, Pa., native, Whitaker resigned in May in order to move back home, closer to her family. When Kittleman took over her former Columbia post, Whitaker said she jumped at the opportunity to work at “one of the best programs in the country.”
“Everything has just felt right and I think a lot of it has to do with [the fact that] I’ve always had a lot of hometown pride,” she explained. “So that is something that is really exciting to me, to be a part of that, to be back where I’m from.”
And to be a part of a program that is chasing an elusive national championship, Whitaker swallowed some pride in reducing her role from head coach to assistant, focused primarily on the team’s attack.
But prior to leading the Lions for eight seasons, the Brown graduate served as an assistant at Syracuse for five years, and said she is happy to be working under a coach the caliber of Corbett.
“Karin is someone who for a long time I’ve had a lot of respect for and I’ve admired what she has done with the Penn program,” Whitaker said.
According to Kittleman, Whitaker found the perfect fit.
“I just can’t think of a better person for somebody with Kerri’s experience to work with,” Kittleman said. “I can’t think of one example in my four years with Karin where she didn’t listen to her assistants and take their opinions and their insight to heart.”
Kittleman admitted that Penn is “on a different level” than the program she is taking over, but she is banking on the her belief that “there can be a shift of power in the Ivy League at any time.” Columbia finished 0-7 in league play last season, and has not finished with more than one Ivy win since the school added a women’s lacrosse team in 1997.
Now the ex-Penn assistant is faced with the difficult task of giving a struggling program a major boost. But Kittleman will still side with her former team — with one exception, of course.
“I think I would only root against them once and that would be when we play them,” she said. “With both coaching staffs knowing the other team, I’d like to hope it would be an interesting game.”
Whitaker, meanwhile, is much more confident now that she has joined the winning side.
“I just can’t wait to get going,” she said.
