No matter the challenge, Drew Coyle always finds a way to adapt.
The Our Lady of Mercy Academy three-sport senior athlete could have probably played any sport she wanted in college. So naturally, she picked the one she just learned. Coyle will play Division 3 women’s lacrosse next year at Kean University despite excelling at other sports she played most of her life.
“I always thought it was going to be basketball up until last spring,” Coyle said. “Then in the fall, I thought it might be soccer. And last summer, it switched to lacrosse. I’d say maybe by basketball season this year, I finally decided that lacrosse was the way to go. There’s something about it. It’s unlike any sport I’ve played, and I’ve played like 12 sports.”
Coyle grew up playing soccer and basketball while exploring swimming, dance and gymnastics. In middle school, she added cross country running and volleyball to her arsenal. It wasn’t until high school that she picked up a lacrosse stick.
“She didn’t even start playing lacrosse until her sophomore year,” OLMA lacrosse coach Georgina Morrell said. “Picking up all the things that she has in just a couple of years is amazing. That just shows you what kind of mature athlete that she is.”
Coyle will study speech language pathology at Kean because she has what she describes as “moderate hearing loss” in her left ear. It went undiagnosed until seventh grade.
“I would be on the field, and a coach would be calling me, and I couldn’t hear it. So we finally got it checked out,” she said, explaining that after visiting an audiologist, she got a hearing aid.
Her hearing issues certainly never affected her schoolwork. Coyle is an honors student at OLMA and received South Jersey Coaches Association Scholar Athlete of the Year recognition earlier this month. It comes as a well-earned honor, as Coyle is a three-sport star, holds a 4.65 GPA and is a member of her school’s Sports Leadership Academy. She’s a bona fide leader in every sport she competes in.
“She’s vocal and helps get the team motivated and ready to go,” Morrell said. “She has heart and hustle and is aggressive. She never gives up.”
Coyle is a defender in lacrosse, often assigned a shutdown role on the opposition’s most lethal scorer. In soccer, she flips that role as one of the Villagers’ leading goal scorers. In her senior season, Coyle led the team with 14 goals, including the lone goal in a 1-0 win over Union Catholic in the first round of the playoffs. The Villagers pieced together a successful 10-8-1 season.
“We had a great season in soccer,” Coyle said. “Me and my friend Carley [Volkmann] led the team in scoring, and now I get to play with her one last [lacrosse] season, which is fun.”
In basketball, Coyle scored nearly 600 points in her career and helped the Villagers compile a 16-11 season, which also included a playoff victory.
The success on the lacrosse field actually follows a pregame ritual that Coyle learned in gymnastics.
“I can hold a handstand pretty long from doing cartwheels around the house all the time as a kid,” Coyle said with a laugh. “I do a handstand before every game for good luck, and sometimes it pays off.”
Most of the time, it does. OLMA was 13-4 heading into tournament time as the Villagers were preparing for the Cape-Atlantic and Non-Public B State tournaments.
“We hope to at least make it to the second round of the playoffs,” Coyle said. “We’re in Non-Public B this year, so I feel like the competition will be pretty good. I think we are ready.”
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